


Who's The One Who Believes

by NorthwesternInsanity



Category: Dokken, Music RPF, Winger (Band)
Genre: Angst, Drama, Friendship, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Recovery, Support, Trauma
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-18
Updated: 2019-05-29
Packaged: 2019-10-12 08:28:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 28,295
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17464031
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NorthwesternInsanity/pseuds/NorthwesternInsanity
Summary: 1999.  Jeff Pilson is left bleeding from impact following George Lynch's departure from Dokken.  As far as he is aware, everything between them is over.  The passage of time has sided with Reb Beach, but is not enough to keep him from feeling lost and scared when faced with changing bands again -this time while out of contact with Kip Winger.  When Reb finds himself joining Dokken and Jeff finds himself adapting two new styles into one to move the band forward, they both realize that their work together goes beyond writing as a guitar and bass team.  They're both working together to heal.





	1. Shattered (Prologue 1)

**Author's Note:**

> Set in the missing part of the timeline for my other fic, "FALLING AGAIN".

Jeff Pilson sat hunched over on the edge of the bed in the hotel room, looking down to the ground where the toes of his shoes contacted the carpeting as he listened to the showdown across the room. He heard Don yelling into the phone -every one of his words distinguishable, and the distorted yelling coming through the receiver was so wrathful that the garbled sound made it across to him too. 

Jeff couldn't make out enough words to know what Don was responding to, but he couldn't block his recognition of the unmistakable voice of George Lynch. That was more than enough to give him the gist of what it was about, and to not want to hear more.

"If you thought that I would have said 'yes' after the agreement we made and after you tried to kill me, you would have already been mistaken," Don spat, "but you asked to come back in this band after everything you did -the fights with the crew, the things you broke on the bus because you _had_ to throw them at me, and attacking Jeff on top of it all? And expected to be back and have any part of what you tried to sabotage before taking off? You're out of your fucking mind, George. NO. Hell to the fuck, _NO!_ YOU WANTED OUT, YOU _STAY_ OUT."

With the few weeks they had left touring in the United States following George's departure, John Norum had filled the position. After a month long break that everyone in the band had needed desperately, being completely drained and still numb from the tense weeks leading up to it, and the hangover that followed. Don couldn't have fairly questioned who -between himself, Mick, and Jeff -was more relieved to find out that John was onboard to go with them on their European tour, and that they wouldn't need to search for a new guitarist so soon after the fact.

However, with his own projects to attend to, John warned that his position could not last beyond helping them in their emergency of needing a guitarist or breaking the tour schedule. They'd all expected and accepted that.

What they had not expected was that George would call them the month after the fact, requesting to rejoin. Don had vehemently rejected that offer with management -and even they wouldn't argue with Don's call, even with the loss of tour revenue in George's absence. Between the nature of George's last few months in the band, and the delivery of his request, nobody could blame the disorder on Don's temper.

With management on his side, and with George having signed to leave the band, that had been nothing much worse than frustration.

However, the lawsuit George was now slinging at them on the last few weeks of the tour for the shows they'd played without him was worse than that. The timing really couldn't have been worse, lining up with about the same duration left of the tour as they'd had the last time he'd put the band through the wringer with his departure. 

For Don, it was going through the motions of what he was long since used to. 

For Jeff, it was ripping open wounds that were barely scabbed over, and putting him right back where he'd been a few short months prior.

Don could have dealt with the lawsuit on its own, handled through their management and attorneys to play the less friendly mediator. He would have still been just as pissed, he knew he was going to be choosing between an anxiety attack with heart palpitations or getting drunk to block it out at some point in the next few days, and he knew he'd have had plenty to say about George on top of what he already had. But he could have done it and been okay. Jeff might have been okay to bounce back, had it been that way.

With George calling Don and Jeff in their hotel room and starting a screaming match after the last show of the tour -in the morning and less than an hour before the itinerary had them set to leave for the airport to head back to the United States -it was far from okay.

And Don wasn't having _any_ of it.

Jeff was the little brother Don never had and never could have growing up in his situation. George, who had been much more and different than a brother to Jeff, had stood in the way of every move Don made to show how much he cared about Jeff in his way, and painted him as the villain to Jeff's cocaine paranoia-stricken eyes in the 80s. Jeff knew better coming back clean in the 90s, and now that the image had flipped -George had done what he'd done and left -there was no apology Don felt the need to make in looking out for Jeff. 

Never would Don forget the weeks around George's departure, as much as he wished to forget and tried to block out. Jeff had been in an agony so strong that Don felt overwhelmingly exhausted just seeing how he reacted to the pain. With the extreme to George's betrayal, it went far beyond regular heartbreak. To guess what pain Jeff actually felt was something Don couldn't do. It wasn't worth the anxiety and getting pulled back to old, bad memories and feelings. Getting the band back on track without meltdowns waiting to happen around every corner would sooner help them all.

There was no way in hell he was going to let George get away with causing Jeff any more pain on his watch with the game he was playing now. Especially this soon. Jeff couldn't take it. _He_ couldn't take it -none of them could in reality. Mick had been miserable, and the crew had had to deal with George in his completely out of control state. Don decided it wouldn't have mattered even if George had been better to him and hadn't gone for his throat with his bare hands. He'd had enough.

Rolling his eyes as George went off on another round of incoherent, violent screeching about the things Don had done wrong -for sure, he'd have been throwing punches if he'd been there -Don turned to cast a sidelong look at Jeff and took in the sight of what the noise coming through the phone had done on its own, without Jeff and George having to speak directly.

Jeff didn't seem to notice that Don was looking at him. His upper teeth were covering his lower lip, which he did not bite, but held tightly between his tongue and teeth -almost sucking it in. Despite the physical distraction, his lower eyelids were shiny with unshed tears against the light coming in the hotel window, and that was the last tipping point for Don.

"Is he gone?" Jeff asked without even looking up as Don slammed down the receiver and ended George's verbal tirade. His voice was thick and up an octave higher from his normal speech pattern.

_He'd been doing so well with carrying on and not letting it drive him until this too,_ Don thought to himself mournfully. It had been a few months since George left, and this was as bad as Jeff had been since the night he physically parted with them. He could see all the same, deep cracks, and just the slightest wrong touch would shatter him. Leave him in a pathetic condition right before they had to run through Heathrow to catch a flight home.

"Yeah, Jeff; he's gone, and he's not coming back. I'll make sure of that. Mick will too. Heck, even Wyn will when it comes down to recording whatever we do next."

Suddenly, Jeff's feet were no longer hanging over the edge of the bed, but were planted on the surface, and he had folded himself into the fetal position, burying his face over his knees.

Don sighed and lugged Jeff's suitcase over to the door, then hoisted his own suitcase from the floor to set it on its wheels that were nearly useless for rolling in a straight path without a fight. A fight that would give him a much-needed distraction today, as much as he still despised the thought of it.

And he tried to distract Jeff too, before he could come apart entirely.

_"Uggghh,_ what a mess. Ready to go home and start figuring out how the hell we're gonna clean this up?"

"I thought it was over," Jeff murmured. "I thought we'd already taken care of it all and it was over."

"We all hoped so. _But,_ there are some people in this world who like to backstab, and some will drag everything out and never let it end. If no one were like that, we wouldn't be like this right now in the first place because we wouldn't have ever had a problem. Nobody would have _made_ one. So as much as it sucks, it doesn't surprise me that he dragged this out too."

Jeff didn't respond to Don's assessment. Whether it was out of annoyance of another reference to George, or not knowing how to respond, neither Don, nor even Jeff himself could truly figure out.

He knew it really wouldn't have been truly over even if George hadn't been creeping around their back stairs again. They still had to find a permanent replacement for George for it to really be over, and that was going to be hard regardless.

"Come on, Jeff; there's gotta be a way we can fix this." Don sank down on the end of the bed next to him. "It's not gonna put everything back or make it stop hurting overnight, but there's something we can do to work though it. He's not worth this."

Jeff nodded.

Don sighed again, because _lord have mercy_ -between dealing with George, having to see Jeff almost back where they'd started at the end of it all, and having to deal with it early in the day, the day after a late night show and right before throwing themselves into jet lag -it was _so exhausting._

"You didn't sleep much last night, Jeff. You need to sleep on the first plane, and I guess we'll make that step one. I mean it too; keep your reading put away until the second flight and go to sleep. You're gonna get sick and make it worse."

He checked the time and glanced to the itinerary, more as means of shaking off the discomfort striking him than needing the information.

"Our cab should be outside pretty soon; let's just get out of here now." The _'before someone tries the phone again'_ was silently added. "We'll stop and make sure Mick's out of his room on the way down to make up for the extra time."

Jeff finally lifted up from his knees. His face was dry, but his cheeks were flushed and his eyes were bloodshot from holding back tears.

"I know we can fix it -we've been through worse and this is going to be fine, as stupid as it is," he insisted.

He turned his head and looked up to meet eyes with Don -bewildered meeting knowing -with an uncomfortable pause.

"It's just that I've never really felt _this_ before -this kind of feeling I have now. I know I can ignore this and fix it. Getting home and starting on the next record once we figure out who the hell we're going to get -the sooner we start that, the sooner it'll happen, the sooner that it'll be _fine_ ...but I just _don't want to._ I don't want to do all that." 

Jeff leaned over to defeatedly rest his cheek on Don's shoulder. 

"I don't feel like doing _anything,_ Don."

Don smirked, and the weak attempt at a curt laugh caught in his chest with deep, old pain.

"I'd say that's a familiar story alright," he drawled sarcastically, tucking Jeff under his arm as he got up and they headed for the door and their luggage. "Welcome to my world, Jeff."


	2. Wanders the Streets

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Life has gotten easier for Reb over his time with Alice Cooper. Nevertheless, finding another band to join has not, especially with lasting fears which nothing can erase...

Reb Beach had a lot of experience with searching for bands and session projects to join.

Between the difference in the 80s and 90s, backed by his current search, he'd figured out for sure that it was a lot easier to catch word on bands with openings to consider, and in a pinch, find sessions to join when working with a producer that had taken a liking for one's skills. It was also a lot easier when grunge wasn't all but pushing metal out of the picture, and the space left for metal was being dominated by four, disgusting human beings who were half the reason he was in his place now.

Finding even a session to hold himself to before getting with Alice had been nearly impossible without Beau Hill there to seek him out and throw his name around. Reb could dare to say he missed him too.

It was eventually Kip and Paul's connections to Alice that helped him find his way. But now, as he resumed his search on a late evening at home, he might as well have been searching an open square mile field in pitch darkness for one specific blade of grass.

Alice Cooper had been encouraging Reb to look at options for places to go, and Reb knew that with Alice's kinder form of tough love, it was really kicking him out of the nest -with a chance to secure a position elsewhere first.

It was a good thing and Reb knew why Alice was doing it. Without it, he knew he'd gladly stay there and not look any further or move forward with his talents, just as he'd hung onto session work for the longest time and accepted it as where he was stuck for a time -before Kip Winger came screaming into his life and agitated him enough within his comfort zone to make him step out of it. He hadn't come out of it easily either; it had taken a few tries before he found enough common ground with Kip to get anywhere. 

Somehow, it all turned around in the end, and that led to the band that became Reb's ultimate joy and ultimate sorrow. 

It was unfair, seeing it lift off and thrive free of the usual culprits that tore bands apart as he experienced his dreams he thought were too far out to come true, and it had only taken a few darts to shoot them down, and subsequent TV jokes followed by the invasion of grunge to keep them from getting back up on the airwaves. Cruel rejection came from every angle until there was nothing left to do but accept it as over.

And practically everything in the years that followed felt like rejection to Reb. He feared it even when it wasn't there. He feared it now from auditions looming in his near future when he had yet to find out who he would even be auditioning for -if he could.

Yet, Alice's encouragement to look for a way forward did not feel like rejection. That screamed louder than any other sign to him that it was for the best.

It reminded him of Kip's tough love from the start, and something said that if Kip was with him, or at least able to talk to him -not in hiding from the public eye at home in Colorado, doing serious classical studying and composing on his own through a grief-stricken state of mind only exacerbated by the smaller tragedies stacking up before his massive, personal one -maybe Kip would have said the same as Alice on moving on. Reb tried to reassure himself with that much.

He had felt the fear of rejection on a near-paralyzing level right before auditioning to be with Alice. The approval Kip had given him in response to his anxious rambles of his plans to audition, and his support in getting ready to do it were what Reb had to thank for having the nerve to stand on his own two feet before Alice with a guitar, let alone play and sing. Knowing the talent he had and having connections from the past hadn't been enough to keep him from being sick with fear on his audition day despite it.

Now, it was different. He wasn't in as desperate a situation. He had everything he needed equipment-wise and life was stable. Enough time had passed that while he still harbored plenty of bitter feelings toward the disbandment of Winger, Reb could think about it to access his positive memories for a moment without them being immediately encroached on by the recent ones from the hard ending and immediately falling back into the pain of it. His nightmares came weeks -sometimes even full months -apart rather than coming every other night, and at least most of the time, he woke up with dry eyes and wasn't yelling out in the dark. He could laugh and play around in hotel rooms with Paul Taylor like it was the old days. With enough distraction, he could feel halfway normal.

His fear was strongly present as he considered his next move, but it wasn't so strong that it trapped him in place. He could make the decision on his own. Not without turning around on it to think twice -or at least four times -before feeling confident in it, but he could.

However, there was a part of him that felt lost. Part of him that wanted to hear the same go-ahead from Kip he had the last time, even though he knew that Kip would approve it if they could talk. He didn't _need_ it to find his way, but it would have functioned like a pat on the back. Like a second pair of eyes on the map to confirm that the road he was turning down was going in the right direction. Like comfort from the fear and pain that still was there and all too real -and not from something bad in the past he was just thinking too hard on.

Alice and Paul could give him the same validation he wanted, and it would have helped, but it wouldn't have kept him from missing Kip, and with two years apart, he was beginning to feel less ashamed in admitting it. 

Reb was sick of feeling like he needed to be ashamed, but he did. Paul and Alice being there to root for him should have been enough to keep him from feeling lost, alone, and going forward without knowing where he was going and what he was getting into, but it didn't stop him from having moments when there might as well have been no one with him at all. It especially felt shameful because Paul had been there for him, and Paul had gone through a tough time too. Even having left at the best time -only seeing the start of when things turned nasty, rather than living the full speed of the downward spiral in the last few months that comprised John's entire experience -Paul had struggled. He'd been burnt out, and the damage done was enough to make it difficult for him when he'd gotten back with Alice just as Reb was taken into his fold.

Paul had some remaining things to recover from beside him too. For the most part, they'd supported each other, but Reb doubted he'd ever shake the guilt he had over the times he'd unintentionally overwhelmed Paul with how upset he was. He'd have done anything to erase the night he'd come down from a high fever back to lucidity to his throat raw from screaming, Alice's soothing whispers, and the helpless look in Paul's red-rimmed eyes.

By chance, with some phone calls, Paul had given him a flashlight for his search. It was small and weak, but there was one possibility for sure out there.

He knew that Dokken was looking for a guitar player, and Reb was a Dokken fan, which had prompted him to make some phone calls to Geffen record management and find out how he should contact the band. George Lynch had always been spectacular to Reb with his soloing and overall presence onstage; he'd crossed paths with them before, and in the short interactions he had, Mick Brown was a riot, and Jeff Pilson hadn't made one unkind move toward anyone, and wouldn't that be a cool experience to have a part of it, at least for awhile...

But George's presence was far different from his own, and maybe it was reaching too far. George's style was much dirtier in both tone and structure than the clean, highly-trained one that Reb had adopted with his years in music school, and it was an old, comfortable habit that wouldn't just die hard -it wasn't going to die unless it took him with it. And between George being a full-out guitar god and as cruel as fans could be to replacements, surely it would be hard enough _without_ being from the band that it seemed the whole world had decided to hate...

Still, Reb mused, it would ultimately be up to the rest of Dokken to decide who could do it. Probably not him; there were plenty of others out there who could have flawlessly copied George's style. Going there for the sake of it carried the risk of another rejection and strengthened fear with it. But, it seemed to him that expecting rejection from the start made the fear less. At least it couldn't come as a shock.

Or, he could end up being chosen. Dealing with the rejection of fans was a harder thing to move past, and even more likely to dig up old pain-

_But there won't be any chance if I don't audition. If I try out and decide I don't want to take the gig, I can still back out from joining... But I know I want it, so why am I even...?_

"Alright, Reb," he grumbled to the empty room around him, casting a bitter glare at the letter paper before him. "What are you even doing? That's enough; we're doing this. Not going to bed until..."

Five hours later as the clock reached 3:30 in the morning, six crumpled drafts of his offer to audition littered the tabletop, and at the distance of a ten minute drive away, Reb stood at the drop-off mailbox outside the post office. It was deserted in the darkened stillness of the night, and the fog that began to set in the early morning air dulled out all the small motions in the otherwise still dark. Nobody saw him slip the envelope in with shaking hands and his heart in his throat. By morning, it would look as though nothing had happened, but Reb knew it was happening now, and was very, _very_ real.

Without having to be collected from the neighborhood, it would go out in mere hours when the office opened for the day. It would be on one of the first trucks out.

There was a chance he'd face a response, the first chance of rejection, in a week. And if he made it that far, then he'd face it a second time at auditions, whenever that time would be.

The fear ran strong, but by the time Reb made it home, he was crashing off the adrenaline rush of sending off the letter and making a move he couldn't reverse.

Exhausted from a day, and most of the night home alone with no company aside from his running inner fears, he fell out in bed and slept dreamlessly.


	3. I've Already Gone Crazy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The process of finding a new guitarist is underway for Dokken. Sorting through several guitarists who claim they can copy the George Lynch style with ease is tedious for the band as a whole, and painful for Jeff. Then comes one with the forward warning that his style is a little bit different. By the end of the night, Reb has a big decision to make.

If moving forward was supposed to be the key to feeling better about the damage George had left in his wake, it took Jeff very little to figure out that it wasn't going to start working until after auditions were over and Dokken had officially found a new guitarist.

The appointments were painful. In the studio building, three-hour blocks were set through the day to hear out six different guitarists who were camped out in separate, small offices on the hallway for each one. Except for the last, which hadn't filled up fully, and Jeff was glad, because he was ready to be done after the first two auditions of the day.

The first three hour session from nine to noon, to which everyone -not just the guitarists, but Don, Jeff, and Mick had moaned was too early to be making such a decision -had been a strikeout.

Jeff wrote down one obscure name that was the best of the group, just in case they did no better, and dismissed the session with the promise to the one they'd let him know whether he got it or not. But he wasn't thrilled, and with the knowing stare Don gave him through half-lowered eyelids, Don knew Jeff didn't like any of it either.

They had less offers to show up between one and four, and that period had been even worse. Five guitarists, once again copying George as best as they could, but being later in the day for guys used to staying up late for night gigs, they were more energetic, and apt to being vocal about all the tricks they could pull _-'did you notice that pinch harmonic like the sick stuff George does?'-_ and how they could play so that nobody would know the difference on the next album release.

It wasn't that anyone of who they saw was a bad guitarist. Some of them probably had their own, good and unique styles too -Jeff was sure. But all of them chose to show how they could recreate the style of one of the greatest guitar gods of the 1980s metal scene, and the line between displaying it in an honest show of wanting to help the band continue with their distinctive sound and just showing off as a matter of pride was so blurred that it made Jeff's head spin.

He wanted to puke. Either that, or smack the next person he heard go on about George.

By the time he, Don, and Mick were returning from a too-tense and quiet walk into town for dinner, waiting for the next session to begin from seven to nine with only three auditions expected to show, they were all over it. Jeff was getting himself very comfortable with the idea of blowing a fuse with the thought of having to hear one more. Either he'd run outside and run around the parking lot like the madman he ran with a bass as onstage to deal with the restlessness building inside himself, or he would actually go digging through the building utility closet, find the electric panel, and shut everything supplying power to the amps in the studio down if he had to hear one more person give a speech on how they'd spent however many hours over however many years learning the dirty vibrato licks because _'George Lynch is one of the best in the whole world...'_

"I don't want anyone like who we've seen," he finally spat out, breaking the silence in the room. "I don't want a clone of George. Especially not right now."

"You don't?" Don raised his eyebrows and cocked his head, then snorted at his own sardonic humor. "That's nice. Neither do I."

"I could do with a change of pace myself," said Mick softly. "The style didn't do too much for us the last time around anyway."

"Nice to know you're on my side, Mick," Jeff muttered with no feeling at all.

Unlike his usual loud and rambunctious self, Mick bowed his head and sat looking down to his lap with the same look of shame and discomfort half his interactions with Jeff ended with as of late. He understood fully why Jeff might have felt otherwise -like everyone immediate to him had turned against him -and he had his part in it.

The last three months hadn't just been bad with the George situation. He and Jeff had their own situation to sort out, and they'd let it hang in an uncomfortable balance. No fighting had come about, but there hadn't been much speaking. It had mostly been very cold and detached. Jeff knew that Mick was stricken with shame and horror, and Mick knew that despite his calm demeanor, Jeff really felt like pounding him -and accident or not, he deserved it. Maybe if it hadn't been for George's physical attacks on Don, and the one on himself, Jeff would have felt better just sucker-punching Mick and getting it over with so they could start talking again, but he couldn't do that.

It was one whole clusterfuck planted in the middle of George's revolt, attempting to destruct the band with lawsuits when his attempt with _Shadowlife_ had failed, and if George had one unexpected ally in the war he'd started, it was Lisa Pilson.

In hindsight, it hadn't been a wise plan. Jeff already knew his marriage was in trouble with his being away and drifting apart. In an attempt to fill the gap George had left and save his home relationship, Jeff had tried the method of bringing family on the road -which wasn't unheard of, and not too hard in the rather dull touring life he led now compared to the heyday of Dokken. Maybe more time together and having some adventures around Europe in between shows would be the key to closing the forming chasm, and maybe it would give him something to focus on other than George's absence.

Instead, it was a fiasco, and it only sped up the breakup process. Jeff wouldn't have minded it so much if Lisa had been sleeping around with the other bands they'd traveled with when she'd begun declaring they'd already broken ties before she and Jeff decided officially on those terms.

Leading on Mick Brown to think it was over and seducing him was crossing a far more serious line. And with old party habits that died hard, Mick believed her without question and took the bait. Entering the back lounge of the bus to the aftermath in the morning had been far more unpleasant to wake up to than any cocaine-paranoia induced nightmares Jeff had suffered in the past. Don might as well have been the only person within a thousand miles that Jeff could trust a hundred percent to not hurt him further, and that was saying a lot when Don's snide tongue was like a knife fresh off the grindstone since George's lawsuit slinging had begun.

Don held up three sheets of printed paper he'd used the brand spanking new computer the studio office had just acquired to type up neatly, and gave Jeff a scheming side-eye.

Rejection letters to the ones they'd decided had definitely been far too full of themselves to consider further at the afternoon session.

"Feel like signing them and sending them off yourself?" he offered. "You can do the honors, or there's one for each of-"

"No." Jeff sighed and stood up, deciding that he needed to at least briskly walk around the parking lot before the evening torture could begin. "You enjoy it, Don. The two of you had more trouble over the years anyway."

With that, he stalked out of the room. The exterior door on the hallway sounded a moment later.

Don heard Mick gulp.

"Mick, do _you_ want to sign any of them?" Don's mouth creased into a frown and the light left his eyes.

"Nuh-uh." A moment later, Mick stood up and walked down the hall. Don knew he was going to the small lounge to mix up a drink that would knock an ordinary person out on their back, but at best would only make Mick feel floaty.

He sighed and tossed the papers down unsigned on the office desk. The momentary sense of fun in shutting down someone with an overzealous ego like George had disappeared with Jeff and Mick's rejection of it, and he didn't feel like signing them anymore either.

Jeff ended up walking around two city blocks, taking a pace just under a run and watching his back for the first round of evening drunks as he moved about the streets in the fading light. The stir-crazy sensation, as well as the agonizing feeling that he'd sat around all day and gotten nowhere began to fade, just as he looped around to the parking lot where he'd started.

As he walked through it to get to the external staircase, he saw familiar figure -tall, slim and with long hair getting out of an older subcompact car with a guitar bag.

"Is that Reb Beach I see arriving?" he called out.

At the sound, Reb jumped as though he might have been electrocuted, taking a death grip on the car door.

_So much for getting here and being calm..._

"Look, if you're here to say you're not sure about having someone like me because I'd look uncool, you might as well tell me straight up and I'll leave," he snapped, closing the door and leaning flat against it on the outside.

Jeff took a step back and cringed with confusion.

"No, I just saw you arriving and thought I'd say hello? And maybe -if I could -since I knew him and I know you've been working with him, I was going to ask how Paul Taylor's doing?"

"Paul?" asked Reb, trying to disguise how stupid he felt for snapping immediately in defense when it seemed there hadn't been any reason to at all as he uneasily dropped his guard. "Actually, he's doing well. He's been happier lately than he has in awhile. He had a hard time with the touring and left Winger before it all fell apart and did some TV stuff. Ended up back with me in Alice and struggled a little to get back with the speed at first, but he and I were alright by the end, and I think he's about to get a better deal with TV writing now if he takes it."

"That's good. Actually, really great for him -I didn't know he'd moved into TV, but I heard he tried to do something out of the touring industry, and I could see him having fun with that. So, I knew you're auditioning and I see you made it here early." He paused, looking uneasy.

"Reb, how _are_ you?"

Reb sighed and shifted his guitar bag strap up on his shoulder as the rush of adrenaline began to drop off and his arms turned into shaky, heavy deadweights at his sides.

"If you're not gonna take it the wrong way, nervous as fucking hell," he admitted. "But that's pretty much everywhere and anytime lately -it won't stop me from doing whatever."

"No, no," assured Jeff. "Nothing wrong with being nervous before an audition -we're a little stressed up inside too, and I know you guys have been through it. It's good to see you here for that too, as well as Paul -you know, it's tough, but you're all still fighting it."

"Yeah." Reb pulled away from the safety of the car and took a step toward Jeff with the realization he wasn't going to make jabs at Winger. "I've had better days, but it's not terrible anymore now, and -we did all realize it would have been just as bad if we'd tried to keep going together. Leaving it when we did is probably why I'm doing better now. Just, ending it and knowing the struggle I was going to go through because of it was probably been the hardest thing I've had to do."

"I'm sorry," Jeff murmured. "We had to stop with internal things, but with it coming from the outside, that must've been-"

"No, please don't." Reb startled. It wasn't that it upset him. The unexpected kindness was just striking something deep inside him that was still raw. "I don't want to be pitied -I'm okay now, and I shouldn't be going there before I audition like this. But I get that you understand, so thanks for that."

Jeff nodded, knowing why Reb might not take well to that approach, and started to turn to head up.

"Hey, Jeff?"

He turned back around. "Yes?"

"Just wanted to say thanks to you guys for letting me come here tonight too. You would know that some guys out there wouldn't want anything to do with me because-"

"It's fine, Reb." Jeff tried to smile -more as means of easing the fright in Reb's eyes -but something painful hit right in his chest where he'd felt impact mere months ago, and he winced instead. "I'm headed up -you can come in with me and I'll get you set up in a room where you can kind of do whatever you need to get ready until it's time. Practice, get in a calm space, whatever. The lounge is down on the left end of the hall if you need something to drink or anything like that, and just let us know if there's something else you're looking for. I'm interested to hear what you've got."

For the first time all day, Jeff felt like he really did mean it too -and wasn't just saying it to be nice. Reb followed him up the stairs, and Jeff showed him into an office and where the wall plugs were if he wanted to plug in an amp and practice before meeting back up with Don and Mick.

"You bring someone else up with you?" asked Don.

"Yeah."

"We got another who cam while you were gone in another room, and we're still waiting on one more. If he arrives before the top of the hour, I say we just start early so we can get the hell out of here."

"Yeah," said Mick. "Oh, boy, have I had enough."

However, between his talk with Reb and the reassurance that they only had half as many to hear out as before, Jeff felt that maybe it wouldn't be too bad. There was a chance he wouldn't completely lose his mind before the end of the night.

Reb's turn to audition came second, and after he'd quickly taken a chance to run his fingers over the hardest Dokken riffs he'd learned, he spent most of his time waiting with his fingers pushed into his ears and humming to warm up his voice so that he couldn't hear the sound that leaked down the hall from the insulated recording room and begin comparing himself to his competition. Whoever owned the studio building, Reb was glad they'd let Dokken use the side offices. Standing in the hallway in plain sight next to his competitors waiting to audition for Alice had been awful.

"Any questions before you have at it on the floor?" asked Don.

"Not from you that I can think of yet," said Reb, plugging his guitar in and lightly tapping his fingertip on a string to see that it was connected. "I was going to ask the same thing -if you need me to say anything."

"Well, how about you tell me what made you decide to try out? Tell me about yourself and why Dokken spoke to you."

"I guess the opportunity looked good." Reb felt his stomach drop and hoped he wasn't turning red in the face or getting ready to stutter, being on the spot to explain something he hadn't thought of how he would. "I'm trying to get back to a more guitar-involved band after being in the shadows for awhile -anything that works around a definitive riff and soloing is how I tend to play naturally -and Dokken has always been guitar-heavy. I've always considered myself a big fan and know the songs, but being realistic, my style in terms of how I sound is -it's really not like George's at all."

"Yeah, I think I can gather that, knowing where you're from." Don nodded as he fixed Reb with a look that made him feel like he was under a microscope -squinted eyes, tight lips that made his jaw look clenched. _Skepticism? Or just thinking on it?_ The plunging feel in his stomach ramped up, squeezing everything tightly. There was a look to Don that told him what he said could make all the difference, good or bad. Like the floor underneath him was ice, and one wrong word would send him through it.

"I can play the songs, but the way I play them is going to be a little different because I don't really try to mimic the George Lynch style -I adapt things to my own style -and if that's not what you guys are looking for, I'm not gonna argue with it. I'm here to give it a shot, and I'll find out."

Don raised his eyebrows and looked to Mick, who also sprang a surprised look that Reb wasn't quite sure what to make of.

"Whenever you're ready, have at it, Reb," said Jeff.

Reb stepped back, and once his pick made contact with the strings, he was in an entirely different world. He couldn't remember at the end of it which songs he'd played the riffs and solos for. All he could remember as he came out of the last one, extending a fadeout solo with an improvisation of his own was trying to catch his breath without letting his shoulders and chest heave visibly, and feeling the flash of heat rise to his face, then immediately drain with a dizzying sensation.

"That's enough," said Don. "Before you knock yourself out on our floor."

Shaking his hair back from his face and managing a quiet 'thank you' before unplugging his guitar, Reb slipped quietly from the room before his arms could go completely heavy and shaky again.

"Do we even need to hear the last one?" asked Mick, once Reb retreated to the office he'd hidden away in.

"Given we know the last guy isn't John Norum, if you want the truth, no," said Don. "But, we'd better, just so we don't risk having one more guy out there on our case if he opts to get a snoot full over it."

Jeff stepped out before the very end of the last audition, taking off on another walk outside. By the time he returned, there was one less unfamiliar car in the parking lot, which told him that whoever was left after Reb had been given his rejection straight to his face, as Jeff expected he would.

He would have rejected him too, but he didn't want to be there to deliver it. 

"So..." Don was waiting for Jeff inside the side door at the top of the exterior stairs when Jeff came back in. "Do you want to talk to Reb with us?"

"Yes. I'm up for that."

Reb was sitting in the desk chair when they opened the door, guitar packed up in its bag, looking down to his lap where he clasped his hands together, and pushing himself with his feet to turn the chair back and forth in a slow, steady, nervous rhythm. He flinched and looked up when the door hinge screeched at the half-open point, and stood up, poised to snatch his guitar and run.

"Good or bad news -you can tell me straight up."

"Well, it's all relative as far as what kind of news it is, Reb, so you're gonna have to decide for me." Don walked in, followed by Mick and Jeff, and sat down on the edge of the desk once Jeff closed the door. "Does playing and writing in Dokken sound like good news to you?"

"Is that what you're offering me? Is it -did I...?"

"If you want to. You're above everyone else we've considered, so the moment you call it, you have it."

Reb sat back down in his chair, staring at Don in bewilderment, then making quick glances from him to Jeff, to Mick, and back again.

"You don't believe it?" asked Mick. "Man, it's a wonder the poor guy after you had anything left to plug into after you tore all the amps up in there!"

"You did really well." Jeff nodded encouragingly.

"I just didn't think you guys would want me because my technique is so different, from..." Reb trailed off.

"Tell you what," Don challenged, leaning forward and putting a hand on his hip. "How about you look at it this way -maybe we _don't_ want someone who's just like George, or someone who's only concerned with copying him. Ever think of that?" He tapped the side of his temple and gave Reb an unnerving side eye.

"N-no?" He shook his head and internally cursed the break in his voice. "I guess I didn't."

"Well, we didn't see too many people today who weren't afraid of playing things a little differently, or taking a different style to it, so you brought the right ammunition."

Before Reb could stop himself, the biggest fear he had from the time he'd even thought about the audition ripped itself from him.

"If I join, it won't cause a problem for you guys with the fans, will it? Are they going to be throwing shoes up onstage at me because I'm not... -you know?"

If the words that sprang out had worded his fears exactly, it wasn't shoes Reb had seen being thrown in the nightmare he'd had the night before -and a good number of his nightmares in his first months with Alice -but he was trying to break the fast path his mind was linking together right back to where his troubles had started, and his efforts to block it out had worked some there. Shoes, darts, same difference. Shoes would make more sense in an amphitheater anyway, and Reb wondered if he was finally starting to get somewhat better from his trauma when he could begin to laugh at the same dreams that harassed him, because what average person carried darts in their pocket to a concert anyway?

That was what he hoped and tried to make himself think, anyway. He knew well enough that if he were really getting better, he'd stop having the nightmares entirely.

He'd had so many of them that they no longer woke him up with a shock. Wore on his nerves on a subconscious level to play on his nerves later, yes. Effected him immediately, no. He felt the effects of them later, but he no longer felt the pain after years of it being everyday life. Reb couldn't remember what it was like to not expect the possibility of having a nightmare on any night.

"Look, there's not gonna be anyone throwing shoes on our stage -at anybody -because of you. Anyone who does can fuck off," said Don. "We have security at the venues for a reason, and if they're going to be there, they can make themselves useful for once and haul them out."

"Man, there's the beauty of having a smaller crowd than we used to! Not as big of a mosh to get through, security sees exactly who did it and knows where to go, aaaaannnd _GONE!"_ Mick clapped his hands together loudly to further accentuate 'gone' and exaggerated the motion with his left hand approaching impact, as so to fling his right arm out afterward in a firm point at the door. "Busted!"

The corner of Reb's mouth hitched up nervously.

"You know, I think if they just try listening, most of them won't have a problem at all." Jeff took the high road.

"And even if someone does, it's their problem," said Don. "And if they try to make a problem for us, it's also their problem for being an idiot coming to a concert just to be obnoxious because they can, alright? You cannot let stupid people dictate you -you can't please everyone in the music industry, Reb. Don't try to, 'cause it'll kill you."

Reb took a moment to try and translate Don's words back to ones Kip had told him before -in less biting terms than the ones Don was trying to strike away his fears with. They did help, but deciding was so hard with the pressure of three pairs of eyes on him, waiting his response.

"Yeah -and don't think I want to let them scare me off, because I don't. Give me a second to think on this-"

"If you need a few nights to think in it, that's cool," said Jeff. "Maybe try to get back to us by the end of the week at the latest."

Reb sighed with relief. "I promise I'll call in three days at the latest -just so I don't overthink it."

Jeff turned around and walked down the hall to leave Reb to pack up and head home, finding himself with Mick and Don hot on his heels.

Don hissed. "Now Jeff, this has already gone on all day long - _why_ are we gonna let this drag out any longer?"

His voice sounded exasperated, but his tense facial expression looked more angry than anything else.

"Don't kill me." Feeling a shock in his chest that started his heart pounding, Jeff held up both hands as if he was staring down a firing squad. The last time one of his bandmates had directly sent him such a venomous look, he'd ended up pinned to the wall of the bus, and it was too soon to shake off all the fear he had left from it, and with Don and Mick staring him down, he only felt further for Reb's indecision in front of them.

"Give him that much time. He thought _we_ were going to jump on him from the start and we told him we wouldn't -this counts too. Let him have a chance for that to sink in. We're not the only ones in this building who haven't had it easy lately. He's not the only one of us who would need longer to decide -all of us would if it were us."

Mick uneasily met Jeff's eyes, and slowly closed them with a nod in understanding. _This is just one way I'm trying to make it right for you,_ it said.

"We'll let the other know that he's on a backup list," he told Don. "It's only one guy. Jeff, if you want to go home, you can get the fuck out of here now. I know this hasn't been easy."

Jeff couldn't give into the impulsive urge he had to spring forward and hug Mick for that with the cold barrier still between them, but he nodded his acceptance and didn't wait for any further permission. He packed up and had just exited to the parking lot as he saw Reb driving off. With the same sigh of relief, he got to his car and left just as fast, pondering life in Dokken with someone who was nothing like George Lynch taking on lead guitar.

And after the way life had been in the last year, he wasn't against it at all.

.............

If there was one thing Reb was grateful for about the moving around he'd been through with joining Alice, it was that he was only a couple of hours from his Dokken audition, and in the opposite direction from home, just under an hour from Paul.

As soon as he was in the door from his two hour drive home, Reb had the phone in his hand, and he was staring down his backpack he usually brought to the studio for nights he ended up camping out there set down by the front door, and he was ready to throw it in the car so he wouldn't forget it if he hauled out far earlier in the morning than he preferred to wake up.

When Paul didn't answer his phone at home, on a whim, Reb called the studio, and got answered on the first ring.

"Hello?"

"Paul? Why are you in the studio at 11:30-"

"Alice said I could work on one of my own demos, and I'm finishing up. How'd your audition go?" asked Paul.

"It went well," said Reb, feeling his heart flutter because saying that felt surreal enough. "Uh, I have a decision to make that... Paul, are you busy tomorrow? Could we maybe talk about it if you have the time?"

"You know what? Give me about five minutes -there's one last point edit I want to make on this track -do you want to come here and camp out, or do you want me to come to you?"

"I'm fine going there -I'm probably along the road home for you, but don't look too hard if you come here. It's a little messy because I was a little preoccupied with getting ready."

Reb could hear a grin spring into Paul's voice.

"What, dishes piled up in the sink and laundry basket full? Unmade bed? Papers open all over counters? Amps and tracks in the middle of the floor? Show me something I _haven't_ seen before, Reb. You're not auditioning with me."

Reb let himself laugh off the nerves -he had to admit, that was silly. Except under the feeling that the whole world was still looking for him to do one thing less than perfect and jump on him the moment he did.

"Tell you what -I'll come over there, unless you want to follow me home. This is probably gonna be the last night we're camped out together for a long time, so we might as well spend the whole night," said Paul.

Reb couldn't argue with that as another reality fully hit home.

"I'll be ready for you over here."

Reb got an hour to clean up in the kitchen before Paul arrived, and he shut his bedroom door to hide the neglected chores of the past couple of days. He knew it would stay shut and he wouldn't venture into it again for the night.

For a moment, as he checked the hall closet to see that he had fresh bedding available to put on the couch and set up a place on the floor too, Reb let himself bask in pleasant flashbacks of everyone meeting in one apartment for last-minute rehearsals and touch-up sessions on the nights the studio wouldn't let them stay in late. 

The night he and Kip stayed with Paul, less than twenty-four hours of Paul's return from his last gig with Alice Cooper in the 80s. The two nights after Rod officially joined, before Paul could get a break between shows to meet him that Rod spent with Reb and Kip at their tiny place, practicing and getting to know each other. Staying up until 4:00 in the morning, talking, playing, and freaking out over waking the neighbors until they were all laughing and shushing each other for that too.

For a moment, everything was right in the world, and then he was back in the current, living world by himself. Waiting for Paul, knowing that Kip wasn't coming tonight no matter how badly either of them wanted him there or missed him.

And he missed Rod too. A lot. 

Paul's arrival helped knock the emptiness down -the emptiness that no longer left Reb writhing in pain, but simply exhausted. He filled the open space, and his friendly, playful presence banished the quiet.

By the time they were sitting at the kitchen table, getting through talking about the audition and Reb's nerves had eased, he could comfort himself with his imagination. 

He didn't see it and knew it wasn't real, but he could imagine Rod sitting beside Paul -could imagine him scolding Paul for one of his over-the-top jokes or giggling at him. He could imagine Kip making funny faces and exaggerated imitations of his nerves before and after the audition, likely walking around the kitchen, knees slightly bent and hanging his arms limply at his side with twitching fingers to suggest the nervous tremors.

He had a good enough idea of how it would be if they could all be there -even if they couldn't play together for the time being.

"Alright, all that aside... whew!" Paul wound down from a particularly naughty tangent they'd gone off on. "Are you gonna take the gig?"

"I have mixed feelings. Like I did when I signed up -it's the same old with performing as it was with Alice, and Dokken is bigger than that with who I'm replacing." Reb bugged his eyes in thought. "I'm not sure what to make of all them. Jeff was nice to me, and Mick seemed cool. Don's a little peculiar, but so was Kip at the start, so I can't come down on him for that. Getting comfortable with them all is gonna be a big thing if I do."

"Well, that'll be a matter of time. Working with them will help, and maybe hang out some too of they will. I don't know, we didn't get a chance to have much experience with them, before they broke up the first time, but Mick sounds like a lot of fun," said Paul. "I wouldn't mind just hanging out with him for the sake of it someday."

"Of course you wouldn't," Reb snorted. "If you're not burnt out, you're always the wild one with no in between."

"At least that's one thing about me that hasn't changed with everything that has." Paul snorted. "Oh, boy, that's scary."

"What is? In particular -I think the easier question is what _isn't_ scary."

"Just how much you and I have changed since the start. Especially since we've been with Alice..."

Paul winced and leaned his forehead on his hands, and for a moment, Reb really could see the scary changes over the years beneath the familiar features that stood out most to him about Paul, masking the others.

"Damn, those first few months were really hard, Reb."

Reb swallowed and looked down to the table, studying the fine wood grain pattern in the surface. "I know they were. I'm sorry."

"No reason to be sorry either -you couldn't control what happened. That's the one thing I'll say with. Yes, joining Dokken is probably going to set you back a little in terms of comfort, and I wouldn't tell you to avoid it for that, but if it's gonna put you back at square one loosing sleep and just drifting through the day-"

"Oh, no it won't," murmured Reb. "I don't know if I can physically do that again anyway."

"As long as it's not gonna do that to you, you'll be okay." Paul's hand came down on his arm.

"Paul, what was it like before Alice, playing in that group with Jeff Pilson?"

"You're asking about how Jeff was?" Paul looked up to the ceiling, grinned, and looked back down to shake his head. 

"That guy. Never stops moving and he doesn't have a mean bone in his body. We had too much fun together -drove our bandmates crazy because we would act crazy all the time. And you saw him when we were with Dokken for a couple months last year; he's really a great guy. Gotta watch out when he's hyper or of you're having a bad day, because he's a hugger and he might sneak up and attack you with it when you're not ready. Or maybe he's outgrown some of that, but I wouldn't count on it being entirely gone."

Reb groaned. "You probably made enough trouble on your own."

"Hey!" Paul shouted just to tease Reb. "But what's important is he'll have your back if you ever need anything -and if he's anything like how he was, he really, really will. You know how to be funny, Reb -take that with you and it'll help you deal with adjusting -and we'll all knock on wood that nothing else comes out of nowhere. I bet if you take that to anyone who might give you a hard time, it would put them right in their place."

"Maybe. It does help," admitted Reb. There's only so long you can keep yourself going by trying to find humor in everything and turn it into fun and games before that starts to get old too though."

"Yeah, I've been there before, and that sucks too. But, I came back from it." Paul flipped his hands up. "Did it then coming out of the band when it was getting pushed into meltdown mode and my name and credentials probably weren't too appreciated right then. This time it'll be a piece of cake for me. And I still got my foot in the door and made some progress to prove myself. Found out I enjoy it too."

"You deserve it all too. Being able to get in this time and being happy -you don't deserve any less, Paul."

"What I'm saying is just try it if you know it's not going to completely screw things up, because it might just get you where you need to be once you get past the scary point."

"I know that too. I guess I shouldn't forget that -doing something scary -Kip was the one who helped me figure that out before Winger was even a thought-"

"Reb, no," warned Paul. "Don't start on that. Every time you go there, you make yourself cry."

"I'm fine; I'll be alright. And that's true with this too; I know that if I did it with Kip there, I can get through this without him-"

Paul grinned ruefully and shook his head. "You're gonna cry..."

"No, I'm _not_ ," Reb insisted calmly, holding up his hands with his palms facing out and lowering them to the table.

Paul propped his chin up on his hands and sighed as Reb succumbed to the trance of a rambling rant.

"I've also gotten past the worst of this. I remember everything I went through with you, Rod, and Kip, and with John after you left, and I don't forget the times when something didn't work out the way we planned it to, but it worked for the better -not that we would have chosen for it to go that way -we'd have hoped that we could have had a band without Kip breaking himself first. Maybe this has happened for a reason _-I don't know_. It's probably made me a better person for all the pain and dealing with being afraid the whole world's going to turn on me wherever it hasn't, so I'll take that if it's all I've got after being with you and Alice when things got good again -because if I had to choose to go back and have that never happen, that would be hard too.

"I remember all the things Alice told me when we were going through it too -the same things Kip told me back in the day -getting over myself enough to know the difference of who's telling me I'm wrong for my own good and I'm too stubborn to see it, and who's just trying to be an ass out in the crowd -or out in the whole world. I know all those things, plain and simple, and that ultimately, nothing's going to stop me from getting out on that stage and playing whatever Dokken song you could name with them. They can say what they want about me being different -if they have a problem, they need to pick up a guitar and prove themselves. But that won't stop me from wishing it was different right now, because I still am scared of it, I don't like that it has to be the way it is for all of us and that Kip is in the pain that he's in right now, and I hate everyone who made it end up this way -I hope that payback is the nastiest bitch to them it can be and that it'll show to the whole world to turn on them like it did to us when it does hit."

Reb shrugged, sat back, and casually crossed his arms over his chest as he concluded his rant. He closed his eyes when his side glance fell on Paul's unsettled look.

"And I don't think there's anything wrong with that, because that's how I'm doing. It could be out of line, but I'm tired of apologizing for being who I am -I'm tired of feeling bad over it. It's what started the whole thing when everyone wanted us to make us feel bad for being different with the band." Suddenly, he didn't feel finished ranting anymore. "What fucking sucks is how even though we won't apologize for being who we are and try to stand up to it, we still get knocked down. And there's nothing out there to show how we went down fighting our asses off until the bitter end. But we'll wait -someday they'll fall and we'll get back up when they do-"

"Damn, Reb," exclaimed Paul, giggling with pure awe. "Tell me how you feel!"

"No, that's just what I _think_ ," said Reb, looking up to the green digits on the microwave clock glowing 2:00 AM. "What I think because of all the things I've been feeling. I don't know _what_ I feel anymore, Paul. I'm happy, except that I'm also not, I'm in pain but I don't really know when I'm feeling it and when I'm not and I'm just thinking of how much pain I've been in, I _am_ angry -sometimes at things I shouldn't be -and sometimes I still can't even believe that yes, all this shit really just happened. It's been so many things at once; I don't know how to describe one thing -it's just all there, and I'm sick of it."

He stood up, went to the linen closet, and started pulling out extra pillows and blankets in a pile so big in his arms that it stacked too far over his head to see around it, and he had to navigate back down the hall by his muscle memory. Plenty of nervous pacing had left him able to pace it with his eyes closed, and with no lights on in the dark of night.

"It's not that I don't want to let it go. I'd feel so much better if I could, but I don't know how I'm supposed to just forget about something like that when it's still effecting me - _us_ -to this day."

"Well." Paul sighed as he followed him, and with a look to the side in the one gap he had to see, Reb could see the same old burnt-out weariness showing through him. "Going on a hunch from what I know, I think Alice might be right in getting you moved on -for more than why he's told you."

"I know. I know that, and don't get me wrong -I'm happy here. I've said it before and I'll say it again, I loved being with Alice. But I'm not getting anywhere now, and he _is_ right." Reb tossed the heavier blanket on the couch with two pillows, and threw the rest in a pile on the floor that he then dropped down on top of, wordlessly saying insisting that Paul had the couch, he was going to camp out on the floor, and no argument was going to change that order.

"Well, I think you'll get somewhere in Dokken." Paul shrugged, then his playful grin returned. "I know I'll find out because I'll see you around sometime. I think you already know by now that just because I leave something doesn't mean you won't see me again soon enough -or that I won't answer a phone from time to time."

"Aw, _shit,"_ Reb groaned, looking up to the ceiling as the too familiar swelling formed in the back of his throat. "Please don't say you told me-"

"You're _fine."_ Paul knelt in the floor, put his hand on Reb's shoulder, and jostled him playfully. "That's not what I warned you on anyway, you big sap. _Don't_ cry -not that I'm gonna make you apologize if you do. Just don't make saying goodbye sad. We had a hard enough time when we got back together -let's at least end it well."

"That's why we're spending the night." Reb closed his eyes. Paul's last words were so close to what he would have expected Kip would say that they cut right through the thick scarring on his heart. But the swelling in his throat stuck there, not going away, but not going any further to give him the chance to let it out either.

"I'll be okay," he concluded after a moment. "We're good."

"Make some phone calls and tell Rod and John about Dokken." Paul perked up a little before he retreated to the couch. "They might be excited. I know Rod will, and John? You know, Reb, I need to meet him sometime... But tell them about it and catch up with them, because I know that'll help you. I need to call Rod too."

Reb shook his head and adjusted the pillows before scooting down to lie on his stomach as he began to succumb to the exhausting day it had been. "When was the last time you called him?"

"Three months ago," said Paul, switching the lamp off. "Pretty sure that's the longest it's been. I'm thinking I'll call him in the late evening when he'd be falling asleep, or at 6:00 in the morning and get him up bright 'n early to surprise him real good."

Reb cracked up into his pillow. "Paul, you're gonna get it from him. He's gonna tell you a thing or two. Actually, with his teaching now, he might not be getting up much later than 6:00. I couldn't do it."

"What, you couldn't find a way to tie your blankets to you so you could walk into 8:00 AM courses half-asleep? You know the stuff well enough to recite it that way," Paul joked. "They'd have to come up with a special type of late night class for you."

"I don't think I could explain what I wanted without losing my train of thought with so many students watching. It's easier being onstage and just letting the guitar do it."

"See? You just admitted it; it's not that bad!"

"Aw, come off it, Paul!" Reb dissolved in giggling, because sure enough, he had contradicted his whole evening of panic in one sentence -despite the same panic being all too real.

"Reb, you've been up too long; go to sleep," ordered Paul, and a soft _whump!_ sounded in the dark as he flopped down on the couch cushions. "You're toast."

"You're gonna be a different kind of toast when you finally call Rod after this long!" This time, they both were laughing and shushing each other in the dark, and exhaustion kept it going.

"Shhhh!" Paul warned through laughter. "People are sleeping next door!"

Then the laughter died down, and Reb found himself back alone with Paul once more, in his current apartment, and not the smaller one in New York City he'd shared in 1988.

"I'm still gonna miss you, Paul," Reb whispered, barely able to keep his eyelids open as his body buzzed with physical, mental, and emotional exhaustion. "Don't care if we're still gonna see each other again, I still will."

"I know you will," Paul murmured, and the last thing Reb felt was Paul reaching down from the couch to press his fingertips on his back.

"And yeah, I'll still miss you too."


	4. YOU

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The first official band meeting to initiate Reb goes awry when Don runs down a tangent and takes it too far. Mick and Jeff hide away to discuss where they stand with each other, and end up having their most serious heart-to-heart when a frustrated Jeff hits a new breaking point over the rifts between them. At the end of the night, Reb finds himself with a lot more to question than just his decision to join Dokken following an unexpected encounter with Jeff in the parking lot.

Four days after his last night with Paul Taylor, and two nights after calling to accept his position in Dokken, Reb Beach had his first trip into the studio with them as an official member.

It wasn't meant to be anything highly productive; no writing, no jamming -mainly just showing Reb around, getting to know any preferences for equipment he had that could be accommodated by the studio, and figuring out a loose schedule of times they could come to the studio and expect that at least two would be there -which was never to be set in stone even once the chaos settled down. They answered basic questions he had that were more consistent than when he needed to be there, such as what gear he would need to bring and what was in the studio, and gave him the lowdown on what to expect.

For a meeting that started at 8:00 o'clock at night, none of them could have expected for it to become as busy as it ended up becoming -and not in a way they would have expected either.

"...Once we figure out when we want to get in and write here during the week -which is still subject to change based on whenever the heck we come up with something -it'll be easier to figure out when we're all gonna be here," said Don, getting back to Reb, who was still slightly panicked about how to know when to be at the studio when there were no agreed times through the week. "There'll be some days I have other things to take care of, because we still have some stuff left to clean up with the lawsuit, and then some other things you don't need to know about."

"We'll put it like this," offered Jeff. "We'll let you know as soon as we know, and we're not going to expect you to be here if we haven't told you. And if it's on short notice and you can't make it on time, we'll figure it out -it's not gonna be a big deal."

"There are gonna be a few weeks where Mick will be working from home," Don added, "because he needs to spend some time in his life in the house that he has when he's not touring and going straight into bike trips right after, or staying in an apartment in town for recording. I actually have to _send him home_ to make that happen."

Mick busted out laughing.

"So if we call Mick and he's in Arizona, he's not coming to the studio in an hour unless fictional means of transport become reality in the next week, and I don't see the world working that far in our favor, or anywhere close for that matter. We've never had that kind of luck."

"Hey, it'd be cool if it did," tried Jeff, having the closest thing to a real smile Reb had seen from him over the relatively boring night it had been so far.

"Wouldn't it?" Don seemed to perk up from his previous, pessimistic remark as he looked over at Jeff. "It would make some parts of touring a lot easier."

Mick laughed and shook his head.

"We wouldn't be able to keep Mick from hopping around town ever either. Okay, that's enough. Jeff agreed that he's pretty much set to come in on any day another one of us can be here; if Mick's in town, he's good with Monday through Thursday. I'm still up in the air until this law stuff is finished, but there's a new assistant on the case -what's his name, Levin? He's been really good about trying to work around our schedule too."

"I can do whatever you guys ask, but if Jeff's the only one here for sure on Friday, I can be here then and work with him," Reb decided. "I can be here throughout the week, and I guess if I have to do anything else, I'll try to keep it to Wednesday and have that be my day I might not always make it."

"Alright, I'll make a call tomorrow and see if I can work around that," said Don. If John Norum were here, he'd have me try to avoid Thursday, and that's just one day over, so it shouldn't be too big of a change. I wanted him to be here, but he got back with Europe, and you're as good as we've got now..."

Reb winced like he'd been slapped in the face, and Jeff felt like he was choking as he nearly gasped, but instead all the air seemed to rush out of his chest, just as the small hint of optimism and good feelings in the room disappeared too.

Mick lowered his head to put his face in his palm and turned to leave the room at such a sluggish, exasperated pace that his movement looked as if it were being played back on recording in slow motion. Even staying out of it, his thoughts hung clear in the air.

_Too far, Don. Too far._

Reb's eyes flashed with the nervous realization he was wincing and it showed. Rather than trying to hide it and pretend it hadn't been there, he swallowed, winced harder, and reached up to pinch the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger and rub on his sinus bones.

"How much more do we have to go over tonight?" he asked, sounding defeated. "Don't get me wrong! I can stay, and I will, but I've got this headache that's been going all day, and it's been getting worse -I'm sorry..."

Jeff turned and left the room then too, deciding that maybe this once, Mick was onto something with his avoidance -even if it meant leaving Reb alone with Don and whatever else he had to say.

He didn't know how he was supposed to deal with the conflict anymore. 

In the 80s, he'd tried to be consistent and predictable. Initially, he'd tried to be polite with Don and hear his side out, even if he knew he would end up siding with George as he more often than not did from the moment they'd clicked together. That was until the cocaine threw his mind so far out the window that he wasn't sure what exactly was going on, or which of George's vicious words he'd parroted behind Don's back without a second thought. 

He'd tried to take a more neutral standpoint with getting back together, seeing where the problems had hit during the first breakup after the snowy haze cleared from his eyes. He'd tried to be the nice guy by ignoring personal problems, only to have said problems explode in his face. He'd been the mediator standing between George and Don as the conflict grew violent in nature, and he'd caught more than just crossfire in the end.

Jeff was tired of it. He didn't want to be the nice guy and have everyone turn around and continue being nasty to each other, or to him, but he didn't want to be unkind either. He didn't want to have to pick sides. Reb was undeserving of such a strike to the face on the first day and Jeff couldn't stand how unfair it was. But he couldn't bring himself to side against Don when it was _Don_ who had driven himself to the point of exhaustion, trying as hard as he could to get him through George's departure -even when comfort was far from his natural strong suit -and even harder when Mick's comfort lost all effect with the turn of events. He'd been so unfair and so ungrateful to Don in the 80s under the influence of the cocaine; he couldn't let history repeat. Perhaps, he supposed, it was unfair to expect Don to treat Reb the same way as himself, knowing they didn't know each other well and that he'd pushed himself so hard for him. However, Jeff firmly stood with his decision that it didn't mean the opposite needed to happen.

Jeff didn't want to stand in the middle and play mediator anymore either. He was tired of getting jerked around like a flag on a rope in a power tug-of-war, and it was unfair for Reb to be thrown in the fight when he didn't have a chance of holding up in it as the new guy. And he wasn't going to sit silently while pressure built under the surface until another disaster struck.

In that moment, he only wanted to do the one thing he'd never done without being directly provoked in his time in Dokken in response to conflict, or driven by cocaine paranoia. Even though he knew it was unproductive, Jeff felt that he'd earned more than his right to it over the past few months. So he did.

He pitched a fit.

When he found the room Mick had hidden away in, he slammed the door behind him and immediately began yelling. He didn't pause for a fraction of a second when Mick's eyes bugged out.

"I've had it up to here with all this stupid shit, okay? I've really fucking had it!"

"Jeff?" Mick stared incredulously from the couch on the back wall of the vacant producer's office.

"We're already set up for trouble, and _guess why?_ Guess why, Mick; you tell me. And _don't_ tell me you don't know, because you wouldn't be hiding out in here right now if you didn't! You _know_ why you left the room!"

Jeff realized how he was flinging his arm to punctuate his words as he pointed his finger at Mick. The words coming out of his mouth were so similar to ones George put out in his fits of rage in his last months in Dokken -particularly the very last he'd faced -and Jeff shuddered as he flashed back to the scene, feeling the same, unwieldy rage monster trying to possess him too. He saw himself taking the form of the George Lynch who stood before him, screaming and flailing, right before he snatched him in his death grip and slammed him to the wall.

 _Alright, now you are the one taking it too far, Jeff,_ he thought to himself as he took in the sight of Mick leaning back into the couch with wide eyes. Even with his reasons to justify having a showdown with Mick, the thought of lashing out physically at him was too much to bear.

"Look, I know that Don didn't mean it the way that sounded," Jeff tried, getting a handle on his reason, "but I cannot believe he said that -and right to Reb's face too!"

Mick sighed as he watched Jeff pace back and forth, shoulders heaving with quick, labored breaths. It was rare for Jeff to get so angry at anything, but he was hurting, and Don's lack of tact in addressing Reb had touched him where he was sensitive.

"You realize how Winger melted down and what Reb might be thinking right now? He doesn't need to hear anything like that. You saw him at the audition; he was all but apologizing for not being like someone who could really copy George, because he was terrified that we weren't going to like him for being himself. Actually terrified -enough that he was telling us it was okay if we felt that way before it was even suggested! Then we choose him for that reason, tell him to feel free to be himself, and Don throws the mixed message that he'd rather have someone else? Are you serious?

"You know what, Mick? Don _knew_ that Reb's been bounced between however the hell many places in the past few years, he _knew_ that Reb was already anxious about how he was going to be received by our fans after the way Winger went out and the shit they took over there, he _knew_ that he hurt Reb -I know he saw it; he's _not_ stupid, as dumb as it was to say that now of all times -and he still kept going. And I know Reb could tell he meant it, and for him that makes it that much-"

Having rambled for too long without pausing to breathe, Jeff broke off in a fit of coughing and gasping so violent that tears welled up in his eyes. He staggered slightly in place as the blood began to drain from his deep red cheeks, leaving him dizzy. It was all he could do to not give in -to let his face crumple and break down in a full-fledged, crying, angry pity party as he made the pathetic, defeated tie-off to his rant.

"I'm so pissed off!"

"Enough." Mick stood up from the couch, looped his arm around Jeff, and led him back across the room to sit down, pulling him along when he tried to plant his feet and not move at all.

It was the most words exchanged at once and the most physical contact they'd had with each other in months, even while living together on the road.

"Enough _-enough_. Enough. Come on, Jeff. Enough. That's enough. Let's go sit down. We're not gonna talk about him for a minute, okay? We're gonna stay here and leave him alone. Right now, come on."

Jeff stopped fighting when Mick sat him down on the couch, only because he felt so dizzy and pathetic. He watched as Mick went to the door and twisted the latch to lock it, leaving them hidden and safe from the rest of the world.

"We're not talking about him," said Mick. "We're gonna talk about Reb. And you."

"You want me to talk about how this is for Reb and I? How about _this?_ " Jeff leaned forward and gripped his hands together. They were shaking.

"We all collectively chose Reb over how many other guys to replace George -because we don't want somebody who's just like him. We wanted somebody different, and we told him we're okay with him having his own style. The whole point of it is to rework what we're doing with the band, and that means working with Reb. Okay, Mick? It does not mean telling him how we wish someone else were here in his place!"

"And hey, you're right about that," said Mick, "and that's what we need to start doing from here out. Right now, we need to do that. But we need to forget about the rest for a moment -leave everything with Don alone, and focus on-"

"But I _can't_ just leave Don alone; I have to try to deal with this before we end up with-"

"No, Jeff. You take care of you." Mick reached to his side and put his hand on Jeff's arm to try to stop him. "You take care of what you gotta take care of, and you _know_ who you gotta take care of."

"-I try to deal with this with Don before it becomes another mess like what we just had and someone gets hurt ag-"

Mick sighed and slid off the couch and knelt down at the arm of it so that he was looking Jeff square in the eye from less than a foot away. He put one hand down solid between Jeff's shoulders to keep him looking at him, and used his other hand to point directly at Jeff's chest, effectively silencing him.

"You know who you're gonna take care of? _You._ Don't worry about him. You and I both know you can't just change his mind like that -he's too stubborn."

"Then who's gonna make Reb feel like he's actually wanted here?" Exasperated, Jeff took a huffy breath as he tried to regain his bearings. "Who's gonna take care of him, make him feel safe with us, and keep him from thinking we'd kick him to the curb tomorrow if John Norum showed up instead?"

_"You."_

Two sets of blue eyes locked onto each other -one wide and thunderstruck, and the other tired and unrecognizably solemn as a tense, knowing silence fell over the room.

"Okay," continued Mick, "from here out, we're _all_ going forward. We're leaving _Shadowlife_ behind. _Good-fucking-bye_. Whether we're going back to how we were before, or to something completely different -you know, who the hell knows right now? All I know is this -Reb's gonna be part of how we do that, and _you_ are gonna be there."

"Well, I _know_ I'm gonna be there, since last time I checked, you guys aren't looking for a new bass player-"

"All of us are going to have a part in it. And you listen real close, because you know I don't do this kind of serious on any day, Jeff. After tonight, there's no guarantee when you'll ever see it from me again."

Jeff huffed a laugh and crossed his arms over his chest. "Yeah, I've figured that out, ten years ago."

"Hey," said Mick. He motioned for Jeff to turn to him, looking like he wanted to grab Jeff's shoulder and turn him toward himself, but was afraid it would make it worse. "Jeff, hey. Look at me for a second, alright? Just a second, come on. Please."

Jeff looked up sullenly at Mick.

"You really think we're gonna leave you hanging Jeff? Do you _really_ think that Don's gonna suddenly turn around and start _trying_ to make life a living hell for you too after the last few months?"

Jeff sighed and freed his arms to hold his palms up to his sides in frustration.

"I don't think he would and I wouldn't get why if he did, but with the way things have been going, I can't let myself be caught off guard _again."_

"We all have our part and we're all gonna help, Jeff. I will. Give Don a day or two to get over John and pull his head out of his ass, and he will too in his way. _But,"_ Mick paused for emphasis, "you look at where you're coming from and what you do with us -look where Reb's coming from and where he's gonna be in this. _You,_ Jeff, have more power to help him than Don and I do together. Working out instrumental parts, he's gonna spend a lot more time with you just because, and you know where you're coming from. And it's not that Don and I don't know where he's coming from too -hell, we've been through this song and dance already -but we're done and it ended well for us. We're not where you two are. Reb doesn't see us in a place where we don't know what's gonna happen or what's going on, when that's where he's at right now."

"Funny, since I feel that way with where I am with you, Mick," said Jeff darkly.

Mick flinched, and the enthusiasm he'd had behind his encouragement seemed to deflate as he blew out a sigh.

"Yeah, I know you do, 'cause so do I, and if you're not ready to talk about it tonight, we will later, and you can hold me to it too. But first we're taking care of you and this thing with Reb, and we're not dragging him into our mess. Because if it wasn't mine to deal with, I'd run like hell from it -he doesn't need a reason to run from us."

"No he doesn't, and it's the same reason why _that_ was a problem in _there_." Jeff's tone thickened slightly, and he spoke through clinched teeth, clipping off in pauses every few words as he tried to stop breathing so heavily. "I don't know... if you know what it's like, Mick... to be in a place where you feel... like you can't trust _anyone_ you thought you could... and where you just _need_ to have _someone_... on your side. I'm already there, and it's going to be awhile... before it turns around... and that's fine because it's already done. I just don't want to see Reb going through it too. But he's already headed that way when he needs us to _be there_ for him."

"And that's why right now, you gotta do that for him. It's _you,"_ Mick insisted. "Don and I will help you look out for you. Look, when Reb sees you're on his side, he's gonna have your back too. Don't deny it -that guy is scared to death for himself, but he looks out -he'd do anything to make it better for his own bandmates. And even though some things have said otherwise, Jeff, if Don and I could make all of this go away, we would. _I_ would."

"I would too. If I could have stopped it from the moment George choked Don instead of ignoring it, before it even happened to me-"

"No." Mick clapped his hands together. _"Enough._ We've already had that talk, and you're not blaming yourself for Don and George's problems tonight. Or ever, for that matter."

Jeff sighed and sank back into the couch.

"But you're right about everything else, Jeff. We both know -you probably know better than any of us -the next couple of months aren't gonna be easy, and it's not gonna be any easier for Reb. We've just scrapped everything we had in place before, and we gotta figure out what the hell we're trying to do now before we can write anything. He's just walked right into the middle of a mess -hell, you know I wouldn't want to be in his place right now! We don't know yet how well he's gonna do working with us. He could have some mixed feelings starting out, and some of them aren't going to be any more pleasant to work with than Don's have been, and he's gonna need us to care for him even when he loses his temper, same as we've been trying with each other. We've done a pretty shitty job with it lately, but Don and I haven't stopped loving you when you haven't been doing too good with this -I still love you even after you came in here flipping shit, Jeff -and we need to look at Reb the same way. And it doesn't stop there either."

"Exactly," said Jeff. "Other than agreeing with me, your point is?"

"Don could have done better with Reb in there, but you know he's not that bad either. We know he's got his own stuff happening on top of what we got here. And he needs us to love him even after something like that in there. He won't ask for it -he'll deny he needs it until he's nearly half out of his mind, but he does, and we all need to look out for him too -the same way he has with you. Because that's one of the places we lost it time and time again, when we let ourselves forget him back then and push him away when he did try to make it right."

"Well, that's why I couldn't have it out with him in there either -aside from not making it any worse for Reb!" Jeff flopped forward over his lap in frustration. "I don't want to make a fight out of it. I _don't_ -I can't take anymore of that, and he really can't either. But if he knows he likes Reb, _why_ on Earth did he have to make it sound like he doesn't and get him upset?"

"Jeff, I love the guy, and I don't always know what his deal is. I don't think _he_ knows sometimes. You can't worry about it like that or let it work you up. You can't control his mind or what he says -we have to love him for how he's doing with what's going on. We're all going through -look, he's not himself, you're not yourself, fuck it; I'm not even myself, because I wouldn't feel like playing around even if we weren't here. Think about -George hadn't been himself in whoever knows how long before it ended with him, and that didn't stop you from loving _him."_

"It's stopped me now," said Jeff, pushing his tone dark and bitter to keep his voice from shaking. As his breathing settled to normal, the shaking seemed to pick up and carry on what his hyperventilation had left behind.

"Bullshit." Mick stiffly hoisted up from his kneel on the floor and sat down on the couch next to him. "It stopped you from being able to _trust_ him, and you can't love him the way he is now because of that. But that doesn't mean you don't still love _him_. If he showed up normal and not all screwed up and ready to strangle anyone who said the wrong thing to him, you would love him and want him here. You still do -right now, because if you didn't, you wouldn't be missing him, and it wouldn't be tearing you up the way it is."

"I don't m-miss him," Jeff snapped as a tremor sneaked its way into his voice despite his efforts. "And I _h-hate_ his stupid game he's playing, having to drag the mess he made out to try to destroy us. I wish I hadn't let it slide for as long as I did because I loved him then. He couldn't do it with the album, he couldn't do it by physically attacking us, so now he's gotta try to do it through a court, and he's making _everyone_ on all levels of our management suffer in addition to us, and it's not fair, and I don't want to hear from him anymore. At all!"

"You don't believe me, because it's too soon," Mick retorted. "But you know what? There's nothing wrong with that. Give it time. Right now, you say you don't love George -of course you fucking don't, and he deserves for it to be that way until you feel otherwise."

Tense silence fell, and the forlorn, knowing look in Mick's eyes suggested wordlessly that his last sentencing wasn't only for George.

"I don't know how it's even possible for me to want to hug you and punch your lights out at the same time," Jeff strained. "And I think that's the most ridiculous sounding thing I've ever said while clean and sober."

"It's not stupid. Do it." Mick leaned back and spread his arms out across the top of the couch, leaving himself entirely open and vulnerable to attack. "Hit me. Punch me, kick me -do whatever the fuck you want. If you want to do it, _do it."_

Jeff shook his head. "I _can't."_

"Why not?" asked Mick. "I'm right here in front of you and you have full permission to lay me out. I deserve it -I know I do, so go the fuck ahead! Can't work up the will -I got something for you, then. I _don't_ regret doing it. I don't, because I did it thinking you two were over, and I know I wouldn't have if I'd known any different. I _do_ regret that it happened the way it did and that I hurt you, but I'm not going to spend my life feeling bad about someone else's lie and killing myself over it, because if I do, this band is never going to get past that. And I know that makes me even more of an ass, so if you don't have a reason to come pound the shit out of me right fucking now when I _know_ you want to, you tell me, because I'm stumped, Jeff."

"Because that's just _it."_ Jeff's eyes were flooding up with tears now despite his attempts to steady his voice. "I _know_ that it wasn't all on you and that you wouldn't have done it if you'd been told the truth. Yeah, maybe you could have stopped to think for a second -that's beside the point when it's too late now. I've already forgiven you, Mick, and that's why I can't come over and pummel you just because I'm still so fucking pissed. Because you're my friend and my brother, and I love you to death. But I hate what you did -it doesn't make it any less painful the second I forgive it -and I don't know how the hell I'm supposed to just keep going and pretend it didn't happen _this soon_ after! This stuff keeps h-happening too fast, and I can't keep doing it."

He trailed off, realizing he'd subconsciously grabbed at his chest, which now felt as though all the air had left him again, just as it had with George's final blow. And he felt just as unable to react now as he stared at Mick with the words _help me_ silently screaming from his eyes that grew increasingly dull with despair.

"I _can't_ , Mick."

"I know you can't, and I hear you," Mick murmured. "This is a conversation we've been needing to have, Jeff. And whether you can trust me now or not, I want you to know that I'm listening, hard as it is to hear, because if that's all I can do, I owe you that much. The reason we haven't done it yet -or why I haven't come to you to have it -it's not just me trying to avoid it. I don't want to force it on Don by having it when he's around, because we know he can't take it. And really, you didn't need the pain of it on top of getting through the rest of the tour and everything else when all this exploded either.

"Well no shit, because it's already hard enough now," Jeff choked, leaning back on the couch and staring at the ceiling to keep the tears that rested dangerously on the edge of his lower eyelids from falling. He panted through just-parted lips to cope with the pain cutting through his chest, unable to bring himself to care any longer just how pathetic he might have looked or sounded.

Mick gulped, but didn't say anything. It took a moment for Jeff to realize Mick was still leaving the talk open to him without breaking his gaze with the ceiling that was the one safety line keeping him from falling too far. He waited until he could trust his voice again and sniffled back the remaining unshed tears.

"I did need the time, and it was just as well for you with what I might have said closer to it, but it's still hard, and you can't change that. Because I had to get myself past the point of feeling selfish for feeling bad about this stuff. Knowing that I'm not the only one who's been stung in this, when he did you and Don wrong, and you were both having to take care of me because I _had_ to go into shock and hide out for a few weeks. That, instead of pulling myself together and pushing through it so we could all help each other. You guys can tell me I wasn't a burden, and maybe you didn't see me that way, but I had to get myself over feeling bad for how you two had to pull me along even when you were hurting too, when I couldn't function until George was gone. Or for another week after he was gone because it was too fucking _real._ Or when we got back on the road with John and the nightmares came back because he started his game of suing everyone.

"And now, with this between just us, I'm not sick, but other than that, it's the same. I _know_ you miss being able to hang out like normal around me, and I do too, but I'm not ready. I feel better in some ways because I know it's not going to stay like this -I guess this here is the evidence of it -I know you're trying and that it's killing you. Because I haven't been blind to the world lately, Mick -I've seen you while I've been trying to get over this, and you were hurt and wronged in it too. And at the same time _I_ feel like crap because I have to deal with that all over again with _you!"_

Silence fell again. 

Jeff heard a shudder in the exhale Mick released through his nose and looked up to catch a glimpse of watery eyes. That was a rare enough sight from Mick to pull the plug on his remaining angry energy, leaving him drained by the now-cracked barriers and hurt still standing between them that he just wished would fall away without it being so hard.

"I'm sorry."

"No, you don't have any reason to be sorry -with any of those things. Cut yourself some slack for what's happened and what you went through. For fuck's sake, Jeff." Mick's voice dropped to a level that was too quiet for him. He'd resumed the shy, downward gaze he'd taken around Jeff in the last few months when the tension rose between them, but this time it didn't have the look of avoidance so much as it did sadness.

"How did you and Don deal with it? After the first breakup -how?" asked Jeff after an uncomfortable silence passed of watching Mick trying to distract himself by pressing his thumbs and fingertips to the couch. Faint prints of his finger pads appeared and faded away on the old, worn leather surface that held plenty of blemishes that wouldn't fade just as the prints did.

"The first time I saw Don, it was a little over a year after the breakup," said Mick, leaning forward over his lap, "and we weren't expecting to see each other. It was the Fourth of July and I stopped at Robbin Crosby's to see him. And Don happened to be there."

Jeff gulped at just the thought of suddenly seeing George in person with no warning.

"And it was different for us -it's probably not going to work that way for you," Mick added. "Anyway, I saw him and froze -he froze too, and Robbin just kind of left me alone. I could have run, I guess, but there was a part of me that just wanted to see him and know he was okay. And he came over, so I guess he wanted to know too. This is hard to talk about; I don't want to say much about it. For him as much as me -I I don't think he'd appreciate it too much -but we said hello and asked what we were up to. Briefly mentioned our projects. 

"And then, I don't know; he was lost for words. I was lost too, and he was just staring at me, but it was almost like he wasn't really there and he didn't know where he was or what to do -it just wasn't like him, and... We ended up splitting because I had somewhere else to be, not a lot of time to stop, and standing there not knowing what to say was tough. And probably making it worse for him." Mick shook his head. "I can still see it now, you know? He just looked ...scared. Of me. He wanted me to be there, but he was afraid of me being there too."

"He was in pain and probably didn't realize how much until he saw you," said Jeff, "and it was too much to get his head around while you were there with him."

"Maybe, because -well, we still cared about each other. I missed him every day even on the days when I wasn't thinking about him because I love him. And you know he doesn't like to talk about that time, but I know he did too even if he was blocking it out the way he tries to if he's not putting it in lyrics. And it fucking sucked leaving him after that, you know, knowing he was hurting like that. But I wasn't really ready for him, and the hell -he wasn't ready at all. I -don't tell anybody, but... I really just wanted to go over and hug him and roughhouse around like we used to. But he'd have run from me if I did that and it would have made it worse for him, so it was just as well I wasn't ready either, because I might have done it anyway. Just 'cause I missed him so much, and..."

He trailed off and heaved a sigh.

"...thinking of how lost he looked standing there breaks my heart, man. It still does. Knowing how close we were to each other, and everything that ended that first time was still bad enough for him to be afraid of me just standing in front of him -that'll tell me how screwed up I was to not realize it was as bad as that until then. We were able to arrange another meeting, and I won't talk about that one because it started out with some hard talks and got personal -I know for sure Don wouldn't like it if I did. And after a couple of months to take that in, we started calling and seeing each other more often until we eventually got back here with you, and you know the rest."

"But that didn't happen for awhile even for a couple of years after his solo project, because he wasn't ready for us," added Jeff. "I remember he mentioned that had we thrown the idea out of meeting up and considering it a year earlier, he might not have agreed to get on writing together. After what we did while still being screwed up in other ways -that's why I didn't want to be in the band with George once I got clean and saw what was going on. Don had a right to be upset."

"And it's just like if you and George ever could make it right -that's an _if_ and I'm not saying it will -it's not gonna happen until you're okay with him being there again. And you need to be there with Reb for your own self as much as for him, because I know you're not ready for me to just be there like that. I just don't want you to have to be _afraid_ of me, Jeff." Mick's tone was gradually more resigned and pleading for resolution. "It sucks beyond every limit, alright? It sucks. But we've done this before; we can do it again, those of us left here have clear heads that we didn't have back then -even if we haven't all proved it..."

Jeff shook his head, sighed, and reached an arm out around Mick's shoulders. He wasn't ready to hug Mick like any old time, but he couldn't stand to not do something when never had he seen him look so worked over, and he knew well enough that he wouldn't be the type to run from it.

Mick shuddered on contact and put his hand closest to Jeff on his knee. He hid his face with the other by cradling his forehead on his thumb and forefinger. Tears tracked down beneath his hand.

"No, it'll take time, but we'll work it out eventually, Mick. I know we will," said Jeff meekly as he fought in vain to push down the rising feeling of guilt for unleashing his darkest thoughts all at once, and to remind himself that Mick had brought it on himself.

Mick forced out a painful laugh.

"What?"

Still laughing weakly, Mick looked at Jeff straight on through wet, red-rimmed eyes. He was trying to smile in his playfully affectionate way, but the attempt distorted with the tearful shiver in his jaw, and the there was something too genuine and reminiscent in it.

"You were always that guy, Jeff," he choked. "You always were. When we were all but ready to give it up before _Back for the Attack_ , after that God-awful tour that just wouldn't end. You were the one who wanted to record a whole album and give it one last fight if we were already gonna do the soundtrack EP. It didn't last, but it worked. We had awhile where no one was fighting. You were right in that way, as fucked up as we already were. And I don't know much about what'll happen now, but if you could have that much hope for us _then_ , if there's _one_ person in this band who could believe we could get back up from this and make Reb feel alright with it after that in there, it's _you."_

Jeff slowly inhaled and exhaled through his nose, dizzy and unsure whether he felt like he'd thrown a load of weight off his chest, or if he was under more weight with how emotional their conversation had unexpectedly gotten.

"I don't want to say too much, because I think we have enough to let sink in," he decided. "But we wouldn't have had that regardless of whatever it was I said while I was too coked out to remember if you hadn't hung on and tried when you were all ready to run from it. And before this here happened, you still tried with Don and tried to keep me going while I was sick even when it was a lost cause. That's why I had to forgive you."

Mick flinched up from the couch and giving a waving motion with his hand, wordlessly calling it enough too.

"If Reb's still here, let's go rescue him before he ends up in this fucking cry fest. We gotta go..."

"We'll give it some time and check in later," promised Jeff.

On the way down the hall, he ended up overtaking Mick's pace and leading when he opened the door in the main lounge where Reb and Don still were.

"Are you two done shouting down there?" asked Don, turning to face the door. "Do I even want to know what the hell that was all about?"

Jeff sighed. He probably _had_ been that loud when he'd first gone in.

Don looked between Jeff's weary, expressionless face and stance that was so unlike him, and Mick, who had pulled his thick hair forward to cast a shadow over his face that wasn't quite enough to hide his telltale puffy eyes, or mask the sound of the uneven sniffling of someone grasping for composure that was still too far out of reach.

"You know what; don't even tell me," he decided. "I can figure out enough. We'd better call it a night and wait until next time to start putting out ideas. Jeff, are you gonna be okay, or do you need anything?"

It took everything in Jeff to force out a response. "I just wanna go home, Don." _Please._

Mick seemed to wilt harder at those words. He nodded, allowing his hair to flop further forward and raised a hand to hide the rest of his face.

"Then we're all going home, 'cause so do I."

Jeff noticed as Reb sneaked a look around the room, eyes wide with fear and discomfort, clasping his hands together against his stomach to guard himself. 

They made uncomfortable eye contact, and Reb flinched his gaze away. He turned his attention to trying to get a sidelong look at Mick to tell if he was okay without staring him down straight on or embarrassing him, and silently debated whether it would be helpful or not to ask him out loud. Upon feeling too shy to speak the pressing concern he felt, he ended up forgoing the question.

"Reb, you can go now if you want. You too, Jeff. Mick, I had something I wanted to tell you about earlier. It's not anything bad, it's just to make tomorrow easier if that even has a chance of helping us as it is." Something excruciatingly uncomfortable crept into Don's stance and movement as he stepped forward like he was uncertain of the floor's ability to not collapse underneath him. "Let's just -real quick so that you can go home, and please, _for the love of God_ , go the fuck _home_. Don't drive downtown, don't go..."

Jeff shook his head and turned to leave, knowing that this would be the one time Don didn't really need to forcibly tell Mick to go straight home without detouring to the party life first. A couple of days apart to process their talk was the best thing they could have had. 

He had just gotten down the exterior stairs to the parking lot when Reb emerged at the top, making his descent with a a few pauses to send conflicted glances over his shoulder.

Stopping in place, Jeff waited at the bottom, and made his move when Reb stopped at the bottom to send another backward look toward the building.

"Hey, Reb? Can we talk for a minute?"

Reb turned around, and Jeff was taken aback by the defensive look encompassing Reb's body -so much that he looked ready to attack before the slightest hint of danger appeared. It was even worse than on the night of his audition; he was like a cat who had been cornered -hissing and ready to lunge with claws extended at any movement.

"Why was there yelling?" he demanded. "Why is Mick crying? Is he okay?"

Jeff held his hands up.

"Nothing. He's fine," he said, feeling like there couldn't have been a bigger lie within the truth for all of them. They would be okay and they were better than they'd been in awhile, but they were far from okay all at the same time.

"He and I were talking about some stuff that happened a few months back that we've been upset about. We've been working to patch things up, and it's taking awhile, but we're getting there, and I think in a couple more months we'll be just fine. You don't need to worry about it."

Jeff wasn't sure how true the latter statement was, but it was a lot easier to believe when he said it to Reb than it had been every time he'd tried to tell it to himself. Maybe the talk he'd had with Mick was the silver lining of Don's harsh statement -at least, that was what Jeff tried to decide for the sake of staying optimistic. Maybe it would be easier to believe in a couple of days when the pain subsided and Mick was more himself.

"Are _you_ okay?"

"What makes you ask?" Reb crossed his arms over his chest. No longer poised to run or lash, but still fully guarded.

"Well, for one, you said you weren't feeling well -and if that's true, I just want to say I hope you feel better," started Jeff. _True._ "But I know it's still unfamiliar here -first few days in a new place aren't easy, and I know you were already nervous, so -you know if you need anything, you can let me know. And I'll do what I can."

"No, I don't need anything right now," said Reb stiffly, taking a slow step in the direction of his car, and continuing when he noticed Jeff stepped too, to walk alongside his trend of motion. "I'm not doing great, but I'd be stupid to complain after dealing with worse, so in terms of what's important, I'm fine."

"It doesn't matter if it could be worse if there's something that can easily be better," said Jeff. "And Reb, I don't know what happened in there while I was gone, but we want you here. You're the only one of everyone who came in the other night who I want here -I think you were better than any of them-"

"Look," said Reb darkly, cutting him off. "I'm gonna be brutally honest, so forgive me if it hurts your feelings, and don't take it personally, because it's not you. After everything that's happened, I'm not looking for friendship overnight. I don't know if I'm ready to make friends. And I'm sick and tired of trying to please everyone, okay? I'm over it. Right now, I just need to know who I can trust, and that's something I have to decide on my own. If you think you can replace Kip in my life, don't even try. You _can't_. And if you want me to try and replace whatever George was to you, give it up now, because it's _not_ happening."

Jeff blew out a sigh and sped up to the long, angry stride Reb was now taking toward his car. _Great._ If he'd heard all Don had to say on the matter before he'd left, it had stung Reb worse than he'd already feared, and if not, then he didn't want to know what else had been said for Don's sake as much as his own.

"I'm not asking for friendship right now either," he said sternly. "And if you think I'm looking or that I even want a replacement for George, you're mistaken. I just want to know if there's anything I can do to make this easier for you when it's clearly hard enough, so please don't fight me."

Reb stopped and turned around, back leaning against his car, and his guard fell away just as fast as it had gone up. He slumped forward, resting his face in his hand.

"I'm sorry, Jeff; that was unnecessary on my part," he moaned. "God damn it. I don't know why I'm so fucking hypersensitive. I always have been too defensive, and lately I just can't keep myself from-"

"I know what you're saying, and it's fine." Jeff sighed. "I know the feeling, and I know what you're coming from. Don't worry about it when it could have been coming from me."

"The lawsuit with George?" asked Reb.

"That's hardly the surface of what's happened between the two of us. And I've spent enough time on what happened with Mick already tonight and said a lot, but if you need anything and didn't get to say it in there..."

"I'll get over that eventually. It's the least of a lot of things I've heard." Reb shook his head. "The biggest thing is just something that can't be fixed right now."

"Your bandmates," said Jeff understandingly. "And knowing Kip's going through more than just what all of you had."

"And that I can't even do this for him -I can't be there even if I can't do anything to make it better. I haven't heard from him at all in nearly three years. He needs the space to sort out what he's going through. And I respect that. I don't know if anyone can know what that must be like without going through it -and I don't want to encroach on it-"

"There's nothing wrong with missing him, Reb." Jeff sighed as the night began catching up to him, feeling how much he missed Mick when they were around each other almost every day. "Anyone would."

Reb unfolded his arms from his chest, resting his palms on the car on either side of him, and his shoulders seemed less rigid. Still keeping his lower back in contact with the car, he was pushing off to lean toward Jeff. Slowly, more levels of his defenses were slipping away.

"If you want the truth," he said meekly, "I _do_ want friendship overnight, but I know it's not going to happen that quick for me, so why should I even bother trying for it? And I still feel lonely with five other good people standing around me because you can't just _replace_ someone like that." 

His voice pitched up an octave and a flash of terror shot through him as something caught in his chest and made him gasp. Fearful of losing control, he backed up against the car again.

"Of course you can't." Jeff looked like he wanted to come toward him, Reb noticed, but he was hanging back -probably hesitant after the way he'd snapped that he was becoming increasingly ashamed of. He was replaying bits of his conversation with Don, and he remembered a reference to George acting psychotic, and with the way Jeff was acting so distant to any mention of George, he wondered as to just what had George done to him when at one time, anyone who watched MTV could have told from awful videos alone that they were close.

"Reb, take all the time you need, by all means. We're not gonna get on you if you don't instantly get on with us. If you haven't noticed, we're kind of in a rough patch ourselves, and what made you special for us -and for me -was that you were the only one who didn't come to us trying to replace George. Because that can't happen."

"The sound yes; some guys other than me could, but him, no. But I guess you didn't want that at all with everything." Reb looked at the ground and nodded. "And I know this doesn't apply to George, maybe, but... you know, you especially can't replace someone when they're still around and they could come back at any time, or you know they will -if anyone just knew _when."_

"I'm not waiting for George to come back to me with the way he's been acting, but yeah, I get it. You know Kip's coming back, and I don't intend to stand in for him. I'll be here for you if you want, Reb, but I'm doing it my own way."

Reb nodded silently. He was beginning to lean heavier on the car; fatigue was showing in his legs. The adrenaline from the shock of Don's tangent and holding through the rest of the conversation was wearing off, and the distress was beginning to manifest physically as he grew too tired to keep running it in his head. He didn't have any more energy to put his guards up, and now that he was talking to Jeff and feeling like he could say what he wanted as he hadn't with Don, everything that had weighed on his mind from the moment he'd accepted the gig was coming forward without a second thought.

"You can sit down in your car if you want to -or if you want to go home and talk later. I'm not gonna get mad if you do," encouraged Jeff.

"I still miss him every fucking day of my life." Reb dug in his pocket for his keys and set about putting his guitar in the backseat. "I'm not sure about telling you this, but maybe you would understand... But I have dreams where he sends me something in the mail giving me an update on how he's doing and telling me that maybe he'll be ready to start talking again soon, but then I wake up and realize it never happened and I feel like I'm going crazy."

"Reb." Jeff leaned over the open car door with a knowing look. "You can't make fun of a dream. If we did that, everyone in this world would be hearing it for something, and I don't think that'd be the one to get you in trouble."

"Maybe. The uncertainty is driving me insane, but I at least have that..." Reb dropped down hard into the driver's seat and cranked down the window before closing the door, keeping an open space between himself and Jeff. "Maybe I'd move on faster without it, but there's hope I'll see him again soon, and I want that too."

"But you'd still rather have this now than having it be that you knew for sure you couldn't see him again," said Jeff. "Maybe you feel like it's driving you crazy -Mick and I were just talking about that too -but anyone else would feel the same in that place. It's not crazy, it's just the way it is -and since you know he will be back, there's a good chance it'll be that way until he is.

"And I'll get through it. I'll function without him around, and I can. Even though I can't go a day without missing him when he just wants to be on his own and doing something stupid and feeling sorry for myself until I fuck up with someone else, like I did with you." Reb turned to look at the lifeless dashboard over the steering wheel, dismayed as he watched his calm demeanor slide away from him once again before he could stop his train of words. 

"I guess I just feel selfish for that."

Jeff sighed. He reached through the open door and put his hand over Reb's shoulder, leaning forward and down so that they were eye to eye. So that Reb could see the pain in the eyes hidden under the feathery fringe he'd put back when he'd cut away the length of his hair to his shoulders.

"Don't," he said in a low voice with the slightest tremor that a single percent of attention divided away would have missed. _"Don't."_

Reb's shoulders contracted as if that tremor had traveled from the sound waves of Jeff's voice, right into him through his ear to run through his spine and seize him from the inside out.

"We'll be back in the morning, and it's gonna be great." Jeff stepped out of the window and motioned to Reb that he could still hear even as he took a few steps backward, signaling that he was ending their conversation for the night to go home and process what in the hell had gone down over the last hour. "And that's already a lie, because we both know we're not feeling it, and it's probably gonna suck for everyone. But we'll try anyway, because it's not like we have anything else we can do -and maybe we can turn around what happened tonight and come out of it feeling alright. I hope you'll try with me."

Reb nodded, looking down from Jeff as he turned the ignition, and the colorful array of lights on the dashboard barely had a chance to stand on their own before blurring together in a mosaic of yellow, orange, red, and neon green splotches on the background of the black dashboard surrounded by the grey dividers -almost looking like the color scheme on the cover of the first album Winger had released together. Then the red and orange warning lights left darkness in their places as soon as they'd stayed on the three seconds to prove that they were alive and functional for if the car did need to show their message, leaving just the red needles on the gauges and the green and yellow backlighting the buttons of the radio, clock, and vents.

"That's good," he barely managed.

As soon as he had the window back up, and as Jeff turned around and walked several paces away from the car, Reb bent forward and leaned his forehead into the steering wheel. Tears ran against his will when he squeezed his eyes shut. Swallowing back sobs that tried to pull him over the edge, he took a staggering gasp and wiped them away before sitting up and taking the wheel in hand.

He tried to set his mind somewhere away from the ache in his chest that had gone dull for so long and put his brave face back together as he pulled out from the parking lot and floored it home. The radio blasted at full volume to keep from getting too deep in the thoughts that would be his immediate undoing otherwise, and it wasn't until he was halfway home that it functioned well enough to keep him fully stoic and straight-faced. 

_Kip would want you to try._ At least that's what Reb felt was true in his heart and in his gut, and usually those told him right. But there were times they'd told him wrong -most certainly in what they told him of the kind of person Kip was when they first met, perhaps with the two times he'd thrown an unnecessary shield up against Jeff too -and Reb couldn't help but second-guess it until he wasn't sure what to think.

 _Call Alice. When in doubt, call Alice._ Reb figured he and Kip must have called Alice Cooper for advice over a thousand different things when they were getting started and they weren't quite sure what to do. Never did Reb think his guardian angel would end up being in the disguise of a demonic, villainous persona, but if he'd had any doubt following the formation of Winger, he definitely didn't after its disbandment.

He dialed the number he'd come to know by heart and waited through two rings before the line cracked with the sound of a receiver lifting and the wires connecting.

"Hey, is that you, Reb?"

"...Alice? How'd you know?"

"Sometimes I just do, Reb. Can't explain it; you only understand when you get the feeling. How'd your first meeting with the band go?"

"It had its ups and downs, and I still have a lot to decide on. I guess you knew I was calling about that too."

"I don't know; you tell me why you are," prompted Alice, and Reb could hear his knowing expression in his voice. He told Alice about his uncertainties, and what Don had said that threw him, about the incoherent yelling that had echoed down the hall and Mick coming back crying, and finally his exchange with Jeff in the parking lot.

"I have a lot of mixed feelings, Alice. I see signs that if could be good, but then I'm not so sure if I'm wanted still, and if they don't want me, who knows what the fans are gonna be like."

"Reb, I want you to listen carefully -show me you are by not interrupting until I finish -or I will take the serious tone, and I don't want to do that any more than you want me to."

Reb winced. The 'serious tone' was whenever Alice dropped his voice so low, soft, and quiet that it was barely audible as an alternative to yelling. At best, it was intimidating over small things. When it came to everything after loosing communication with Kip, Alice's serious tone reminded him of Kip's monotone and how his somehow became even lower and flatter in the same way when Kip was being serious with him. Alice ended up avoiding it at all costs with Reb after the third time he burst into tears. If he had to hear it after the talk he'd had with Don tonight in combination with his parking lot encounter with Jeff and seeing Mick, he would be inconsolable.

"Got it."

"You're always welcome to come back to me if you need to, Reb. But the reason why I wanted you to get in another gig once I had you on your feet is the same reason why I hope you stay with Dokken for now. Reb, you are far too good a player -and that is not something I intend for you to let go straight to your head, but to your heart, you hear me? You are far too good a player to be on tour in the shadows of a stage hidden by a horror show where few people in that crowd are ever once looking at you. You belong up front, and in Dokken, you bet you're gonna be up front. You've got some big boots to fill. And you need to be out front too. You know why? You can deny to the death that some people's stupid remarks didn't get to you, and they shouldn't. But you know they did, just as much as you and I know they got to Kip at least a little at some point, even when he denied it. Paul and I could sit you down and tell you until we're both blue in the face that none of those things were true, but it would still go in one ear and out the other. And even if you did listen and believe it, you would still be questioning yourself every night onstage, because that's the kind of person you are. You need to get out where the crowd can see you and can't deny that you're there and give 'em hell, show'em what you've got -whatever; it's the only way you're gonna get it in your stubborn head what is and isn't true and start feeling good about yourself."

"But we haven't even started writing yet; it'll be months at least before we have shows."

"You don't have to wait until tour to show Don what you've got," said Alice. _"Do it."_

"Right now, Reb, it's about _you_. Dokken is changing direction, and _you_ are the new force onboard driving that change whether you're aware of it or not. You may not fancy yourself a leader, but you have that power, and this is your time to step it up. It might be a scary time for you, but as someone who's been through many lineup changes, I can assure you it's just as scary for them when they're pretty new to it. And you know what, Reb? With what Jeff's just had to deal with, I doubt you're gonna have to get up and be someone you're not. Stick to your guns, yes; but have a heart, okay? I know you've got a big one in you."

"And if they get given hell onstage because I'm there instead of George, and it makes them turn on me in the end because I'm the guy from _Winger?_ Then what?"

Alice sighed heavily, and when his voice dropped a semi-tone, Reb knew he'd been warned. Any more, and he was going to get it.

"No, you're not going to start on that again, Reb. We've already been through this -went through it when you got to me even when you weren't going to be seen nearly as much. The same thing applies. Don't worry about the people in the crowd; you can't control what they think, and you can't control what everyone on the stage thinks either. The only person you need to be worrying about on that stage and in that concert hall, amphitheater -whatever -is _you._ "

"Okay, Alice. I'll sleep on it." He hesitated to say goodbye just then, but didn't dare let paranoia take the lead.

"Can I maybe call and talk again if I'm still not sure at the end of the week?"

"Of course you can," said Alice. "And if you want to call to say that it's turning around and you're doing fine, you can do that too."

"Thanks Alice."

"Goodnight, Reb. Get some rest and go in there ready to give it all tomorrow."


	5. Haunted Lullabye

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jeff Pilson faces a hard night and hard morning as the current norm would have it, with an added consequence coming off an especially stressful week. Reb remains haunted in both the dream and waking world by what he and his bandmates have faced. Nightmares carry on long after their source. All feel the fog of tension from the previous night arriving at the studio. But how far can a first attempt go?

Beep! Beep! Beep! Beep...!

Jeff woke up gasping, chest locked in hard contracture, cold-sweat across his chest, back, and face. His hair clung wet against his neck, and his throat and lungs burned.

Sitting up and turning his cold, numb legs over the side of the bed, he could feel the heat of blood returning, spreading like liquid chased by pins and needles sticking every inch of skin. Jeff patted his hands to his sides, his chest, the surface of the bed, and looked himself over to make sure he wasn't feeling anything different. 

After months of never having a problem, he'd still not been able to convince himself that any torrent of blood from his nose drenching his entire body in the nightmares where George had successfully hit him in the face wasn't real. Nor did he ever stop startling at the sensation of damp sheets clinging to him upon waking up.

The sheets were damp from sweat, but not soaked through. There was no trace of red on them, or on himself. He ran his hand under his nose and flinched when he felt something wet, but his hand still came back clear because it was only mucus. Nothing. Nothing as always.

_I'm not bleeding. I didn't piss all over myself. I'm fine._

Fine, or was he? What did 'fine' even mean anymore?

He reached over and silenced the alarm clock on the nightstand, grateful that he wasn't waking in the middle of the night. Thus, he wouldn't have to face the choice of going back to sleep and possibly right back into the nightmare, or sitting up and losing sleep, which would leave him stricken with fatigue headaches later in the day.

The love-hate relationship he had with his alarm clock had become increasingly positive in the last few months, almost to the point where Jeff almost had to drop the hate element from it. Even when he awoke still so tired that his body shook, he couldn't bring himself to be upset about having to get up at the alarm's call. It was the sign that he'd come out on the other side of another night, still alive for as hard as it might have been. Sometimes, after enough nights on end where his nightmares stole his sleep away less than two hours into the night, his fatigue would be too great to escape it on his own, even when he became aware it was a dream. The alarm was the only thing in the house that would eventually rescue him from the tormenting images.

Now that the lawsuits were in the final stages, Jeff's nightmares had become more clear and straightforward. George Lynch was there, but he was in some evil form that wasn't _him_ , bringing back the fear Jeff held of him in their last weeks together.

The nightmares he'd had for the first two months following George's departure were nondescript and twisted in symbolic happenings that were so vivid they felt real, but would not have likely happened in reality. Falling as though some invisible force had thrown him back against walls that turned into sharp objects and impaled him through his back on impact. Passing by random buildings on the street just as the windows suddenly blew out in forceful, fiery explosions that knocked him off his feet and sent glass and flames flying at him, until he found himself standing up in a clearing surrounded by piles of rubble too high to escape. Waking up trapped on the bus, crashed and on fire. Finding a gash in his chest where George had hit him last, through which he saw his beating heart bleeding out and fading away with three last pumps through a twisted, shredded aorta and vena cava as flames engulfed everything left around him.

The least gory but most disturbing of them were the nights he'd walked around the places he would have spent time together with George. George's old house, his own old house, and countless recording studios, nearly void of everything that brought life to them. He'd had _a lot_ of those, and many of them were still burned so clearly into his brain that he had accepted the possibility of them never fading.

The first day back to the studio in reality was the first time Jeff saw Don nearly lose his patience with him in the ordeal of recovery and relapses into breakdown, because he'd been so upset at the thought of going inside to find everything empty and busted up that Mick had to go in ahead of them and come back outside to confirm that everything except the gear they were bringing in with them was where it was supposed to be. That was just to get him to voluntarily go inside the building. It still hadn't stopped Jeff from having a panic attack in the middle of it all, curled up on the couch shivering after spending two hours without a hitch, because at some point it was all going to disappear and the normal space was going to change to reflect the images from his dreams. At some point, it was going to change around him, and this time, it was going to be real. And unlike with the dreams where he'd found his way there alone, he'd have to deal with knowing that Don and Mick had knowingly brought him into it and he wouldn't be able to trust them either.

He couldn't blame Don for looking in his eyes to make sure he wasn't high. Jeff couldn't recall a feeling of paranoia so strong since getting clean from the cocaine, and being fully aware of his reaction to it made him feel completely pathetic. Despite it, he couldn't shake the fear off and control it.

He knew Don was looking for answers and trying to fix it, and he knew a complete meltdown over the studio didn't entirely add up on its own. Nothing truly bad had happened in the building between Jeff and George. With what Don knew, the panic and refusal would have made sense on a bus, but not the studio.

And when some of the details of the nightmares slipped as Jeff grasped for control of himself, he watched as the suspicion and anger slid away and a dark cloud of defeat seemed to settle over Don. A sad resignation that there was nothing he could do to fix it, for how hard he'd tried.

It wasn't always as visible as it was then, but from that moment forward, no matter how determined Don seemed on the phone battles with the lawsuits, there was always some despondency over him, and Jeff couldn't help but feel that he'd put it there, and every nightmare involving the studio afterward made him feel like he was stacking that dark cloud heavier on top of all the personal reasons it had gotten heavier for Don.

Ultimately, none of it would have been a problem if George hadn't gone berserk, and resolving to that was the only reason Jeff allowed himself to think heavily on George as of late when litigation issues didn't force the subject on him. The nightmares and the dark state of mind -it all started with him.

Jeff just wished he'd been able to break the cycle sooner. Maybe if he hadn't started the buildup of that dark cloud, last night wouldn't have been as hard. Maybe Don would be coping better and Reb wouldn't have had to bear the consequences of it on the first night...

_No,_ Jeff thought to himself, shaking his head aggressively as if to shake off the thought. _We're not doing that today. I don't need to think like that._

He forced himself from the bed and dragged himself to the shower, trying not to think of how heavy his body felt. The burning in his throat and difficulty breathing had not faded from the end of his nightmare where he'd been choked, and it felt just so he couldn't blame it on thirst and dehydration alone, especially as he became aware of the stuffiness in his head once he was up and walking. But while he was on his own and could stay in denial, he dismissed it as such and used the feeling to block out the lingering images and other sensations from his dreams.

His words with Reb already rang true for himself. The day had only just started, and already, it sucked. He was already run down and a mess both physically and mentally, and just an hour away from full-on illness.

But hell if he wasn't going to try to fight through it with every fading spark of energy he had left in him.

On the other side of town, Reb still hung in deeper sleep, having prepared everything to head out the night before, and having set the alarm to allow himself to sleep as late as possible

He too, was facing his afflictions in his sleep, but in a different light than how Jeff did. 

This dream pattern, unlike the more-frequent dreams of his ending with Winger, was not something Reb could classify as a nightmare. It was haunting and comforting at the same time as he experienced it and left pain behind afterward. However, while it touched his wounds and made him aware of old pain, it did not actively traumatize him with new pain.

It was often the same occurrence every time he had such a dream, aside from the setting where it took place. Kip Winger was there with him. This time, they were sitting beside each other in an otherwise-empty subway car through New York City at some hellish hour of the morning. At least with no clock to check or sky to view, that's when Reb suspected it had to be for there to be a fair chance of ending up alone in a train car.

The conversation was nothing eventful or interesting. Just the every-day banter they might have had at the end of a long day or night in the studio. The kind of talk he wouldn't be able to recall when he woke up. He would only know they'd been talking.

The parts of the talk he would remember in the morning would take place in the last few minutes before he woke up, as it always did in the few occasions he'd had dreams of this pattern. Where the conversation turned toward a subject of not having seen each other in awhile. Of being out of communication, and having concern for each other in absence.

The only thing that set tonight apart from the three other times Reb had such a dream was that this time when they turned to each other, he could see Kip's face and the deeply contemplative nature of his too-familiar gaze. It was only for a moment before he lost sight of it when Kip took him in his arms, but it added plenty.

It wasn't real. But as always, it was more vivid than life -even more tonight. Reb could _feel_ Kip. He could feel the athletic yet limber muscles around his core when he wrapped his arms around Kip and returned the hug. He tried to keep it loose rather than latching on immediately. Tried to not seem as desperate as he really felt, or act clingy because of it. But when Kip pulled him in tighter, his inhibitions dropped and he couldn't help it. With that, they were squeezing each other like some invisible force would try to throw them apart.

And no matter what they did or how tightly they held on, eventually they would be thrown apart, because Kip could _never_ stay. No matter how badly they both wanted it, it couldn't happen.

Reb could feel the train speeding up and bouncing more than it should have on the tracks, and the fear of the inevitable separation began creeping up on him. As the train swung around a corner and the cars rattled, he and Kip nearly got slung across the seat, and tonight ended up being one which they had to let go before the end. Already being apart, Reb knew it was coming fast too.

They sat sideways on the bench, leaning against the wall of the train and putting one leg out in the aisle to plant a foot and resist the pitch of the turns and brakes. They placed one hand out behind them to prop up and lean back on, but Reb locked his one free hand tight on Kip's knee -his uninjured one -and Kip reached his arm forward to grasp Reb's shoulder.

His low monotone was strained. He spoke as discreetly as he could while still being loud enough to overpower the cacophony of screeching brakes and metal clanking as they rattled down the tracks.

_"This next stop we're getting to is gonna be the last I can make. Reb, listen. I want you to be happy. And I don't want you to ever think that I don't care just because I'm not around. Because I miss you. A lot."_

"And I miss you too," Reb confessed, with more composure than he knew he had a prayer of having if the conversation was happening in reality. "But I know why it is how it is. And I want you to be able to be happy again to, and know that I'm here, and I'll still be waiting no matter how long-"

Kip was perfectly stoic, as he often was in reality, but Reb knew him well enough to see the pain underneath his exterior -even without seeing his face -as the shaking that tried to force them apart grew stronger. Reb willed himself not to inadvertently make it worse for him, which meant slowly loosening his grip and giving in to the inevitable, trying to prove to Kip as much as himself that it would be okay after they were thrown apart again. That he would voluntarily continue facing the world on his own and would try to be happy in it as everything changed again.

_"I'll be better eventually, Reb. I'm getting stronger; you don't need to worry about me. But you need to be happy. When I leave this train, I want you to do whatever you need to make that happen. Another band, project, different people, different scene entirely -whatever it takes is fine. You can wait for me as long as you want, but don't let it hold you back. If you have to let go for awhile, let go. It won't change anything. I'm still coming back. I wish I could come back now. Believe me. I don't know how just yet. I'm not ready."_

"Don't worry about that. It's okay," said Reb, before his face scrunched into something halfway between a smile and the grimace that came before crying. "God damn it, Kip; I know you know what you were trying to do!"

_"Say it again,"_ said Kip, and this time, there was an audible choke in his voice. _"Please."_

"It's okay." Kip was still fighting, but he was getting stronger, and that was okay. Reb was starting a new chapter away from Winger, and that was also okay. He was scared, but Kip wanted him to say that was okay too.

"It's okay," Reb repeated as the train bounced harder, willing it to himself and Kip. "It's okay..."

The train came screeching to a crawl without stopping entirely, and the doors opened. Wind was blasting through the car, pushing Kip toward the exit. With the train still moving and the wind too strong to fight, he either jumped now to the safety of the platform while it was there, or risk being thrown into the wall of the tunnel and under the tracks a moment later. Both meant separation, but the former meant far less long-term damage.

"I love you," was barely audible through the roar of wind.

Then Kip sprang forward and took a graceful, flying leap through the doors, and it wasn't even two seconds later that the view of the platform was obliterated by walls darkness as the train went hurtling down toward the next stop.

"I love you too," Reb whispered in the emptiness of the car, trying to focus on the tingle through his arms and sides where Kip had hugged him with so much force, trying to think it was a sign that Kip somehow heard it.

The feeling of tightness was just starting to arise in his throat when the images and feeling of Kip's presence began to fade and Reb awoke sprawled across the bed and squeezing a pillow to his chest with all his strength. 

His alarm clock squalled loudly with the static, incoherent buzzes, and murmurs of a nearly out-of-range FM station that the train's rattling faded into.

Whether it was the result of having already drained his emotions the night before, or from having confided in Jeff on the presence of such dreams, Reb was surprised -almost pleasantly so -to wake from it with dry eyes, and less of a feeling of crushing loneliness on finding himself alone again. At least, he didn't have so much of that feeling to block out the other that told him that if Kip had really been there, he would have said the exact same words.

Reb turned the alarm off and tried to replay the moment in his head, minus the train-track's cacophony. The images had already faded to nearly nothing, but he had the words. Trying to reimagine the sensation of their contact was enough to put the faint tightness back in his throat though, and Reb knew better than to stay thinking on it long enough to set himself back when he was a step ahead. He shook off the thought and hauled out of bed, stashing the remnants of the dream he'd salvaged in the back of his mind for when he would need them.

He was driving back out to the studio in less than half an hour later, and having timed his departure just right, he'd gotten the gap between traffic surges on the road into town, cutting his drive time in half. His own drive was pleasing, but seeing the highway running perpendicular over the interchange loaded with a parking lot of standstill traffic made his stomach twist as he thought of what bad things could have possibly caused it.

_Don't,_ he scolded himself, though this time, he could hear Jeff, Alice, and Kip telling him all at once rather than himself, and it wasn't so much scolding as it just was stern.

_It's okay..._ The line rang out in Reb's head, like a haunted lullaby trying to will his overwhelming anxiety to rest.

The off-ramp to get to the studio was less than a mile ahead. Reb shifted into the right lane and took the exit when it came, leaving the highway and the thought of the crossway behind, and replacing it with figuring out the studio with Jeff.

When he arrived to the studio, he made his way to the lounge where he expected to find Jeff and Don, but only found the former.

Jeff looked like he'd been through a night of hell. Dark circles lined his lower eyelids, and the way he leaned over the table and clutched his coffee mug like his life depended on it overpowered any energetic act he could have put on to deny tiredness. His breathing was too noisy, and he sniffed every few seconds, but his tired eyes lacked the swelling and redness of tears.

He looked up and smiled when Reb came into the room, and though he visibly had a hard time forming it, it at least looked real. His lips were slack, but a small amount of light crept into his eyes.

"Sick?"

"Yeah, I was trying to tell myself I was just thirsty when I woke up, but it is what it is. I guess I'll just have to stay five feet back from everyone."

"Or tell everyone else to wear a hazmat suit if it gets worse?"

Jeff cracked up. He didn't get to enjoy the amusement for long before launching into a coughing fit, but it did last long enough to see a real smile cross Reb's face for the first time.

"Well, that just made it official. Better go suit up, Reb!"

"Not enough sleep and changing lineups. It'll get to you." Reb shared a knowing, sympathetic look with Jeff.

"Well, part of that's over, so at least we're still going the right way there."

Even when Paul left Winger with no argument or bad blood between them, they had lost some sleep in the week leading up to John's arrival. Rod came down with a cold from lack of sleep, Reb had stayed at home imprisoned in the bathroom with a twenty-four hour stomach bug, and Kip had insisted he was fine while riding out chills and a low grade fever in the studio for three days.

"So, what's going to happen today?" Reb looked around the room, still seeing no sign of anyone else. "Are we on our own? Because I didn't think we would today-"

"I don't know about Mick, but Don's on his way. I checked the traffic report when he wasn't here, and the route he usually takes-"

Jeff cut himself off, thinking better at the last second of telling Reb that a car accident was blocking lanes and having his mind go somewhere that would torment him.

"-he's stuck in traffic. He's probably past the worst of it by now."

"I think I saw it; it looked like a parking lot. But I guess he could be at the front of it."

"We'll give him fifteen, and if he's not here, we'll do what we want. Probably jam. The next week is probably going to be that anyway just so we can get our playing styles adapted to each other."

Ten minutes later, Don walked into the studio, set down his guitar and some protective carrying case, and promptly sneezed as soon as his hands were free to block it.

Jeff's eyes were twitching as he looked over to Don and his tell-tale eye circles and tried to speak with a straight face.

"Bless yhh- _AH-CHOO!_ Excuse me, ugh..."

"Bless you?" offered Reb timidly, not even sure who he was talking to now.

Don took one look at Jeff, started to say something, but stopped himself and sighed.

_"Gesundheit,"_ he said sardonically. "Of _course."_

"Yeah, of course. We really could have guessed this was coming, couldn't we?" Jeff repeated his earlier conclusion to Don.

"Is it just the three of us today?" All humor in the situation had dropped away for Reb, and he could feel uncertainty creeping back on.

"And tomorrow. Mick won't be getting back into town until late, if he starts traveling back when he planned to. He went home last night because he needed a day to recover, and it's probably just as well now that we're sick. And recovering goes for both of you, Jeff. Not just him. I hope that was most of what you had to deal with, because I've never seen him the way he was."

He opted not to mention how his sides were still sore twelve hours later after Mick grabbed him in a hug so strong that he couldn't get away from it before they left for the night. It had almost seemed he was afraid of the possibility.

"Yeah, I know it's just as well. I am at least feeling a little better about that," Jeff admitted, and he was. He did suspect the explosion of pent-up feelings had tipped him over the edge to get sick, but being sick for a week was far less painful than where he'd been with Mick. If things were better between them when he was better from whatever crud he'd come down with through the morning, it was worth it in his book.

"Is there anything else we need to get done from last night, or are we good to just move ahead?" asked Reb. "I'm good with whatever."

"We were going to jam all together, but-"

"Mick's not here, and I'd be silly to sing while I'm sick when I have a choice not to," said Don, "so I'm out on that. But if you're ready to move forward, it's full speed ahead at this point if you can keep up."

Reb sighed as the grip in his chest loosened up. "I'm ready to go, wherever we start. If jamming's the start line, I'm already on it."

"I can't sing right now either, but we could jam just instruments only," said Jeff, motioning between himself and Reb. "Well, I technically could sing, but jamming acoustic, I'd probably sound like one of those raspy prog and folk singers. Stephen Stills or someone like that. Nothing against that though. We did an ELP cover on _Dysfunctional_ and have been in a Beatles kind of mood, so it wouldn't be far-fetched."

"Or a bad place to look for a start if we're taking it a step back to _Dysfunctional,_ Jeff. We had a fun time, doing that with just the three of us. We could do those types of four-part vocal harmonies if we're all here and healthy, and as close as we got, that's something we _didn't_ have before."

Reb saw Don send a sidelong glance his way at that.

"I could get with pulling inspiration from those bands -don't get me wrong, I loved those late 60s groups to death growing up, and the vocal harmony could work with just about anything. But this is _Dokken,_ you know? Fast flying leads? Heavy chords? We're supposed to be rocking out! If we're gonna kick up the harmonies, we need to kick up the riffs too."

"And it'll be the attitude you put to your riffs to make that happen, Reb. If you could cover 'Purple Haze' in an entirely different style and make it work, you can use a harmony structure from that era and make it heavy too -you just have to decide how you want to."

"And we could decide to go an entirely different direction while we're working things out anyway," Jeff assured. "Right now, we're still figuring out where we're going.

"Well, let's jam on that stuff and if I get any ideas, I'll record them to work out at home and bring them back here when we're ready for that."

Reb shot a glance across the room to the well-worn, padded bag he carried a small, old track recorder. Kip had given it to him before Winger had formed as means to help him not to forget the most important of riffs when they were apart and couldn't work it out right away.

Maybe today would be the first time he would have a chance to use it since they'd been out of contact.

Don checked the clock. "We're starting later than I planned, so I might as well call up the law office and work on some of the paperwork we still have. I won't have as many things to distract me here as at home, so it's just as well."

"Got it. And if we come up with something right away of note, I'll shout for you," said Jeff, before having another coughing fit down the inside of his t-shirt.

Reb's eyes widened. 

"Maybe I'd better do any shouting we need to do."

"Probably not a bad call," Jeff choked, before smoothing his shirt back down and picking his acoustic guitar back up.

"No, and you'd better not do any shouting, Jeff. We've already had this talk over running yourself down too fast. Alright, you two have the run of the house." Don retreated down the hallway.

"So if you grew up on the late 60s prog and British Invasion bands, what got you to hard and heavy?" asked Jeff, once they were alone.

"Hendrix had a part of it, but once I heard Aerosmith, that was it. Of course, others came later -some of their songs were too upbeat, but Boston, Tom Scholz had his killer tone; Van Halen isn't a surprise if I tell you-"

Jeff grinned and shook his head as he playfully did an exaggerated pull off a guitar string to mimic the twanging line on "Dude Looks Like a Lady".

"We had a leg of a tour where we were with Aerosmith," he said nostalgically. 

"I wish," said Reb. "What were they like?"

"They were a lot of fun. And on the last night, we went out with a prank war to end all others. Including Mick walking out on their stage in drag, and me bribing the keyboard player to alter the intro sound on 'Dude Looks Like a Lady' to sound like someone was saying 'banana' to the rhythm -oh, it was great."

He realized he'd nearly forgotten about that.

"Alright, I'll be asking to hear all the stories later." Reb reached down to his guitar and out of habit picked out the opening chords of "Sweet Emotion," then found himself slowly variating the rhythm as he shifted the chords down across different keys. When he got down to a low, modal form of D Major, he noticed the variated rhythm rang out strong.

Not a full riff to take track of, and not with a direction yet, but something to take home as a start. 

And when Jeff had said the night before how great it would be, before turning back on it, there was at least one reason why Reb could say it wasn't entirely a 'God-damned lie.'

_It's okay... I'm trying, Kip. I promise._

_I know you're trying, Reb. Keep on._

"Hey, maybe this won't suck as much as I was afraid of between last night and being sick. I have some grit from this. Maybe I could manage a Steven Tyler impression while we sit here and jam. At least we might laugh more when I start trying to hit the high notes with this crud."

"Hey, no shouting," Reb insisted.

"Okay, then." Jokingly, Jeff strummed modified chords to "Love the One You're With" to compensate for not having an open C tuning.

"Or screw the rules and shout anyway," said Reb, feeling a jolt of adrenaline at having let himself say it on his first day, until he saw Jeff smile again and realized he hadn't just gotten himself in trouble.

"Then _Toys in the Attic_ , and maybe we'll jam together on our old stuff just to bring back the fast vibe you want," Jeff decided, setting down his acoustic and picking up his bass. "I can tell this is gonna be fun."

For the first time in two weeks, as sick as he felt, he meant it.


End file.
